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FIELD MUSEUM OF NATURAL HISTORY 


DEPARTMENT OF ANTHROPOLOGY 


GUIDE 


PART 6 


ETHNOLOGY OF POLYNESIA \ 
' AND MICRONESIA 


HALL F (Ground Floor) 


BY 
RALPH LINTON 
' Assistant Curator of Oceanic and Malayan Ethnology 


1 Map, 59 Text-Figures, 14 Photogravures 


BERTHOLD LAUFER 
Curator of Anthropology 
EDITOR 






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FIELD MUSEUM OF NATURAL HISTORY 


DEPARTMENT OF ANTHROPOLOGY 


GUIDE 


PART 6 


ETHNOLOGY OF POLYNESIA 
AND MICRONESIA 


HALL F (Ground Floor) 


BY 
RALPH LINTON 
Assistant Curator of Oceanic and Malayan Ethnology 


1 Map, 59 Text-Figures, 14 Photogravures 


JN 


BERTHOLD LAUFER 
Curator of Anthropology 
EDITOR 


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HISTORY 









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CONTENTS 


Page 
Introduction . : : : : o 
Races : ; ‘ 12 
Settlement of the Islands ; : ; : . 14 
Food . : ; 20 
Cooking and Utensils ; ; 38 
Kava and Betel : . 48 
Clothing and Ornament . : 50 
Tattooing and Mutilations . é ‘ 57 
Hair-dressing . F : é 61 
Personal Ornaments 2 j : ‘ 64 
Dwellings . : ; 73 
Furniture . ; . . ‘ ‘ : 80 
Basketry . ; ; % : 83 
Tools . ‘ : ; : 88 
Musical iecruments : 97 
Transportation ; ‘ : : 102 
Oreemneana Wattare . . °. .4%. 4. 108 
Cannibalism . ; : é 129 
Games ; : ; : 1S2 
art: i : : : : 136 
Mana and Tapu ; i t 146 
Social Organization : : ; ; 152 
Religion. : : : 4 ‘ 164 
Death and Burial ; : : : : ; 178 


Bibliography by the Editor ‘ ; : : ; 189 


ETHNOLOGY OF POLYNESIA AND 
MICRONESIA 


INTRODUCTION 


The islands of the western and central Pacific, 
exclusive of the Philippines and Japan, are usually 
classified as belonging to one or another of three great 
divisions, — Melanesia, Micronesia, and Polynesia. 
These divisions are based partly on the geographic po- 
sition of the islands and partly on differences in the 
race and culture of their inhabitants. Melanesia lies 
north and northeast of Australia. It includes New 
Guinea, the Admiralties, New Britain, New Ireland, 
the Solomons, the New Hebrides, New Caledonia, and 
Fiji. Most of the Melanesian islands are large and 
mountainous, New Guinea being one of the largest in 
the world. They are relatively close lying, and many 
of them were connected with one another and with the 
Australian continent by land bridges which survived 
until near the end of the glacial period. The fauna of | 
the larger islands resembles that of Australia. The cli- 
mate along the coasts is unhealthy, and the natives are 
much less friendly than those of either Micronesia or 
Polynesia so that much of the region is still imper- 
fectly known. The Fijians, who are the easternmost of 
the Melanesians, have been strongly influenced by the 
Polynesians, and their culture is described in this guide. 

Micronesia lies north of Melanesia, occupying the 
region between approximately 20 N. and 5 S. latitude 
and 130 and 180 E. longitude. It includes five groups, 
the Pelews, Carolines, Marshalls, Marianas, and Gil- 


5 


6 ETHNOLOGY OF POLYNESIA AND MICRONESIA 


berts. The Pelews, Carolines, and Marshalls form a 
more or less continuous belt of islands extending from 
west to east in the order named for about three thou- 
sand miles. They are in about the same latitude as the 
southern Philippines. The Marianas lie north north- 
east of the Carolines. Guam, an American possession, 
is near the southern end of this group. The Gilberts 
lie southeast of the Marshalls and form a connecting 
link between Micronesia and Polynesia. The Microne- 
sian islands are all small, and are mostly coral forma- 
tions. Their total area is less than 1400 square miles, 
and their population did not exceed 100,000 at the be- 
ginning of the historic period. 

Polynesia is by far the largest of the three divi- 
sions. It has somewhat the form of a great crescent, 
five thousand miles from tip to tip and three thousand 
miles wide at its broadest point. This crescent faces 
west, its points extending far to the north and south 
of Micronesia and Melanesia and partially enveloping 
them. It includes the Hawaiian, Marquesas, Tuamotu, 
Society, Cook, Austral, Samoan, Tongan, Ellice and 
Union groups, New Zealand, and a great number of 
isolated islands two of which, Easter Island and Niue, 
are of great interest to ethnologists. Polynesia is a 
region of enormous distances. Hawaii, at the northern 
end of the crescent, is over two thousand miles from 
its nearest inhabited neighbor, and Easter Island is 
over a thousand miles from any other land. Most of 
the islands are small, their total area exclusive of New 
Zealand being only a little more than 10,000 square 
miles. All the more important ones are of volcanic ori- 
gin. New Zealand, at the southern end of the crescent, 
differs from the other Polynesian islands in its great 
size and also in its temperate climate. 


INTRODUCTION 7 


The Polynesian and Micronesian islands, except 
New Zealand, nearly all belong to one of the other of 
two great classes, high islands and low islands. The 
former are of volcanic origin, while the latter are the 
work of the coral polyps. A typical high island has a 
tall, central peak or mountain-range from which many 
deep, narrow valleys run down to the sea. There is 
almost no level ground in the interior, and the scenery 
is usually wild and fantastic. Between the mountains 
and the sea there is a narrow, more or less continuous 
strip of level land which has been built up partly by 
the coral polyps and partly by the wash from the 
mountains. Some distance out from this coastal strip 
there will be a coral reef, known as the fringing reef, 
and beyond this and separated from it by deeper water 
a second reef, the barrier reef, beyond which the ocean 
drops to great depths. Both barrier and fringing reefs 
usually have breaks opposite the mouths of the prin- 
cipal rivers. High islands are usually well watered, 
for their peaks catch and precipitate the rain clouds. 
On those which lie within the belt of seasonal rains 
each valley contains a clear, cold stream. The moun- 
tains are covered with verdure, and the valleys are 
choked with heavy growth. In the Hawaiian and 
Marquesan groups the growth is much less heavy. In 
Hawaii there are rain forests at a high elevation, but 
the lower levels are relatively dry, and are covered 
with scrub and grass. In the Marquesas, which suffer 
from long and destructive droughts, the uplands are 
covered with reeds and low fern, with occasional 
clumps of Pandanus and Hibiscus, where depressions 
have held the moisture. The Marquesan Islands also 
lack the coastal strip, fringing and barrier reefs, the 
mountains rising straight from the sea. In all the is- 


8 ETHNOLOGY OF POLYNESIA AND MICRONESIA 


lands which have a coastal strip, the population was 
concentrated upon it. Tribes that had been defeated 
in war often fled inland for a time, but the mountains 
were usually uninhabited, except for plume-hunters 
and fugitives from justice. This was due to the almost 
complete absence of food. There were few birds and 
no native animals, and the slopes were too steep for 
agriculture. The people of the coastal strip lived 
partly by cultivating the level ground there and in the 
valley bottoms, and partly by fishing in the shallow 
water about the reefs. 

The low coral islands, called atolls, rest upon the 
tops of submerged mountains. When the top of such 
a mountain came within twenty or thirty fathoms of 
the surface, corals took root upon it and began to build 
a reef. The corals on the outside of the reef were bet- 
ter fed than those on the inside and grew more rap- 
idly. By the time the reef reached the surface, it had 
the form of a ring or of a horseshoe with the opening 
on the side away from the prevailing winds and cur- 
rents. The waves broke off fragments of the coral and 
piled them upon the reef until low islands were formed. 
Atolls are sometimes as much as eighty or ninety miles 
across, but a large part of their circuit is usually bare 
reef awash at high tide. The highest parts are rarely 
more than ten or fifteen feet above sea level or more 
than half a mile wide. There is often a gently sloping, 
sandy beach on the lagoon side of the island, but the 
seaward side is made up of lumps of rough coral. The 
white rock and sand reflect the sun, so that the glare 
is almost unendurable. The villages of the natives are 
nearly always built on the inner side of the island, 
facing the lagoon. They live almost entirely on fish 
and coconuts, and their life is much harder than that 


INTRODUCTION 9 


of the natives of the high islands. In spite of this they 
are often of magnificent physique, and they are the 
only natives who have been able to hold their own and 
even increase in numbers since European contact. 
Even the best of the high islands are relatively 
poor in natural resources. Their reefs afforded a good 
supply of fish, but there was no game except birds, and 
most of the native roots and fruits were not edible. 
All the animals and nearly all the plants of economic 
importance present at the time of the European dis- 
covery had been introduced by the natives themselves, 
and most of them were of Asiatic origin. There was 
usually an abundance of good timber and of stone suit- 
able for implement-making, but there were no metallic 
ores. The soil was rich and would raise good crops, 
but there were few large areas suitable for agricul- 
ture. The low islands had no large timber, no stone 
for implements and almost no soil. The coconut and 
Pandanus were the only plants of economic value 
which would grow on them. A still greater difficulty 
was the absence of fresh water. The natives of the low 
islands were forced to rely on coconuts, on brackish 
water from shallow wells and on rain water which 
they collected by digging pits at the foot of coconut- 
palms and collecting the rain which drained from them. 
The climate of all the islands except New Zealand 
is tropical or subtropical, but the heat is never oppres- 
sive. The nights are always comfortably cool, and are 
often quite cold at the higher altitudes. Many of the 
islands have dry and rainy seasons, but there is little 
change in the mean temperature throughout the year. 
There are no fevers, and the only serious diseases 
known to the natives in pre-EKuropean times were lep- 
rosy and elephantiasis. There are no poisonous rep- 


10 ETHNOLOGY OF POLYNESIA AND MICRONESIA 


tiles and few noxious insects, although many of the 
islands now suffer from a plague of mosquitoes. These 
are especially bad in some of the low islands, where 
they breed in the rain water collected at the base of 
the palm fronds. White men find the constant heat 
somewhat enervating, but Micronesia and Polynesia 
are probably the safest and pleasantest tropical re- 
gions in the world. 

New Zealand stands somewhat apart from the rest 
of Polynesia. It consists of two islands separated by a 
channel so narrow that they form an almost continu- 
ous land mass. Their combined area is 104,471 square 
miles. The northern peninsula of the north island is 
subtropical, but the southern part has a temperate 
climate not unlike that of southern England. The 
south island is still colder, and is very mountainous 
with many glaciers. About half the total area of New 
Zealand was heavily forested at the time of the Euro- 
pean discovery. There were no native mammals, but 
the bird life was fairly abundant, and the first native 
settlers found a great flightless bird, the moa. They 
hunted this for food and finally exterminated it. The 
geological formations are quite varied; there are even 
some metallic ores, although the natives never learned 
to work these. Their finest implements were made 
from nephrite, a variety of jade. This material is ex- 
tremely hard and tough; tools made from it are scarcely 
inferior to those of metal. Much of the New Zealand 
nephrite is of fine green color, and the best of it was 
fashioned into beautiful ornaments. It is said that 
samples of nephrite were carried back to Central Poly- 
nesia by the first native explorers and that the desire 
for this precious material was one of the main motives 
in the migration to New Zealand from that region. 


INTRODUCTION 11 


The climate and natural resources of New Zealand 
produced profound changes in the culture of the set- 
tlers who came to it from Central Polynesia. Only one 
of their food plants, the kumara, a kind of sweet po- 
tato (Convolvulus chrysorhizus), could be grown profi- 
tably, and the paper-mulberry, from whose bark they 
made their clothing, would only live in the northern 
peninsula, and did not flourish there. They eked out 
their food supply with the starchy roots of a native 
fern and learned to make warm garments from the 
fibre of the Phormium tenax, commonly called New 
Zealand flax. They abandoned their flimsy thatched 
houses and developed new types better suited to the 
climate. The abundance of fine, hard woods led to a 
remarkable development of wood-working and carving 
and to the almost complete abandonment of stone con- 
struction. They acquired an energy and force of char- 
acter rarely found among their tropical relatives, and 
became not only the best of the Polynesians, but one of 
the finest races in the world. 


RACES 


The physical anthropology of the Oceanic peoples 
is still very imperfectly known. The Polynesians are 
the only ones who have been intensively studied, and 
even there a great deal of work remains to be done. 
In the light of our present information they appear to 
be an extremely mixed group made up of at least four 
originally distinct stocks. These stocks are:— 


(1) A long-headed, broad-nosed race of moderate 
stature with dark brown skin, curly hair, and a ten- 
dency toward prognathism (projecting face). This 
type is distinctly Negroid. It is the dominant one in 
Easter Island, and is fairly common in New Zealand 
and, to a lesser degree, in Central Polynesia. 


(2) A short-headed, broad-nosed race of short 
stature with dark skin and curly hair. The affiliations 
of this type are uncertain, but it shows both Negroid 
and Mongoloid affinities. It was present in some 
strength in Hawaii and the Marquesas, but was rather 
rare elsewhere in Polynesia. 

(3) A long-headed, narrow-nosed race of mode- 
rate stature, with light brown skin and wavy to mode- 
rately curly hair. This is probably a very primitive 
Caucasic (white) type. It is found in all parts of Poly- 
nesia, but seems to be strongest in New Zealand and 
the Marquesas. 

(4) A very short-headed race with a relatively 
narrow nose, tall stature, light brown skin, and straight 
to wavy hair. This type is also Caucasic. It is domi- 
nant in Samoa, Tonga, and Tahiti, and is present in 
nearly all the other Polynesian islands. It was prob- 


12 


RACES 13 


ably the last race to enter Polynesia, and seems to have 
been gradually replacing the other races at the time of 
the European discovery. 

There is very little information on Micronesia, 
but there can be no doubt that its population is even 
more mixed than that of Polynesia. All the Polynesian 
races, with the possible exception of the type men- 
tioned under (2) are present, and at least in the west- 
ern groups there is an additional stock, a round-headed, 
straight-haired people of low stature with somewhat 
oblique eyes. ‘These people are Mongoloid, and are 
closely related to the Malays. The information on 
Melanesia is still less satisfactory, but the bulk of the 
population is distinctly Negroid, corresponding to type 
(1) in Polynesia. Along the coasts of the larger 
islands and in the smaller outlying ones, there are 
groups which show all degrees of mixture between 
this type and the Polynesian types (3) and (4). 


SETTLEMENT OF THE ISLANDS 


There are a great many different theories of 
Oceanic settlement. Nearly every student of the re- 
gion from the days of Captain Cook to the present 
time has had his own ideas on the subject. Most of 
the theories advanced have been based on a single 
class of evidence, such as language or traditions, and 
none of them is entirely satisfactory. The problem 
is an extremely complex one, and no final solution will 
be possible until we have much more complete data. 
The Polynesians have a wealth of migration legends, 
but those dealing with their entry into the region are 
full of marvelous incidents, and most of the places 
named in them can no longer be identified. Their 
oldest authentic traditions do not go farther back than 
A.D. 500, and most of them refer to voyages between 
groups which were already known and at least par- 
tially occupied. The Micronesians also have stories 
of relatively late movements within the area, but the 
Melanesians seem to have lost all memory of their 
migrations. 

Melanesia was no doubt the first of the three re- 
gions to be occupied. At the close of the glacial period 
many of its islands were connected with the Australian 
continent, while the Indonesian islands were connected 
with Asia. The sea separating these two land masses 
was narrow enough to have been crossed by men who 
knew the rudiments of navigation. The first Mela- 
nesian settlers may have been in the palzolithic 
stage of culture, for the Tasmanians were still in it 
at the time of their discovery, and the Australians had 


14 


SETTLEMENT OF THE ISLANDS 15 


progressed little beyond it. The race of these first 
inhabitants can only be conjectured, but it seems cer- 
tain that Negroid peoples entered the region at a very 
early. time, and were thoroughly established there be- 
fore any large scale penetration of Polynesia and 
Micronesia began. 

The Micronesian and Polynesian islands have 
never been connected with any continent. Only races 
of fairly advanced culture could have made the long 
voyages necessary to reach them, and they were prob- 
ably the last part of the habitable earth to be occu- 
pied. The first Polynesian settlers seem to have been 
of Negroid race, corresponding to type (1) of the his- 
toric races. They entered the region from Melanesia. 
Their eastward migration may have been largely in- 
voluntary for their descendants, although they build 
good canoes, are timid sailors, and will not put out 
into the open sea. Perhaps they entered Polynesia at 
first as castaways who had been swept eastward by 
cyclonic storms. They established themselves in 
Tonga, Samoa, Niue, and the Cook, Austral, Society 
and Tuamotu groups, but it is doubtful whether they 
reached the Marquesas or New Zealand, and it is 
fairly certain that they did not reach Hawaii. They 
probably settled some of the Micronesian groups as 
well, but: it is impossible to tell the extent of their 
occupation. 

The next people to reach Polynesia were prob- 
ably the short, dark, round-headed race designated as 
type (2). The historic distribution of this type sug- 
gests that it was the first to occupy the Marquesas and 
Hawaii, but it has left few traces elsewhere; it prob- 
ably failed to make much impression on the islands 
which were already occupied by the Negroid people. 


16 ETHNOLOGY OF POLYNESIA AND MICRONESIA 


The third race to appear on the scene seems to 
have been the long-headed Caucasic stock designated 
as type (8). There are many traces of this race in 
the Philippines and in the larger Indonesian islands. 
It was probably an old southeastern Asiatic stock. 
These newcomers seem to have been fairly good navi- 
gators, and may have been the first of the Oceanic 
peoples deliberately to explore and colonize. They 
entered the Pacific through the gap between the south- 
ern Philippines and New Guinea, and apparently split 
into two streams one of which travelled eastward 
through Micronesia, while the other coasted southward 
along New Guinea and the islands immediately to the 
east. The climate of these islands was unhealthy; 
they were already well populated so that this wing of 
the migration was largely absorbed or dissipated be- 
fore it reached Polynesia. It left many traces of its 
blood and culture in Melanesia, and may have been 
responsible for the development of the Melanesian, 
as distinct from the Papuan, languages. Some of the 
emigrants who had taken the Micronesian route seem 
to have gone on eastward to Hawaii, while others 
turned southward into western and central Polynesia. 
There they found the Negroid race already in posses- 
sion and intermarried with it, producing a hybrid 
population. This mixed race seems to have developed 
a distinctive type of culture, which was eventually 
carried to the Marquesas and New Zealand and sur- 
vived there, in modified form, until the beginning of 
the historic period. A group of the mixed race in 
whom the Negroid strain was dominant discovered 
and colonized Easter Island. 

At a later time, probably not much before the 
beginning of our era, a fourth race entered the region. 


SETTLEMENT OF THE ISLANDS 17 


These people, type (4) of the historic races, were the 
Vikings of the Pacific. They seem to have reached 
Polynesia by way of Micronesia, arriving’ first in 
Samoa and Tonga, but they rapidly extended their 
voyages over the whole area. Most of the Polynesian 
migration-legends apparently deal with their move- 
ments or with those of groups who had learned their 
navigation methods and had been set in motion by 
them. Some of their voyages covered amazing dis- 
tances. Ui-te-rangiora, a great Rarotongan navigator, 
sailed southward from that group until he encountered 
the icebergs of the Antarctic. They repeatedly sailed 
from Tahiti to Hawaii and from Rarotonga to New 
Zealand. Polynesian traditions make it possible 
largely to reconstruct the equipment and methods of 
these daring navigators. They used great double 
canoes, sometimes as much as 150 feet long, made of 
planks sewn together with coconut fibre. The space 
between the two hulls was decked over and bore a 
small house. There were either one or two masts with 
sails of Pandanus matting. They are probably to be 
eredited with the introduction of the lateen sail which 
made it possible for them to run closer to the wind 
than the best European square-rigged ship. | 
Their stores were baked bread-fruit paste, sweet 
potatoes, and coconuts. They caught the bonito and 
other fish of the open sea. Water was carried in 
gourds and wooden vessels, but they relied mostly 
upon rain. They steered by the stars and by the long 
Pacific swell, and were experts at holding a course. 
Whole tribes sometimes set out in search of new 
homes, taking with them their gods and the plants and 
animals which would be needed to found a colony. 
On such expeditions the fleet spread out into a great 


18 ETHNOLOGY OF POLYNESIA AND MICRONESIA 


crescent with four or five mile intervals between 
the canoes, thus sweeping a wide expanse of sea. A 
sharp lookout was kept, and particular attention was 
paid to the flight of birds. Those which were known 
to sleep on land were sometimes caught, fed and re- 
leased, the voyagers following the direction of their 
homeward flight. If the first land encountered by 
the fleet was undesirable, perhaps a barren atoll, they 
would rest for a time and revictual, and then put out 
to sea once more. When they found inhabited land, 
they conquered the natives if they could. If they were 
too weak for this, they tried to ally themselves with 
some one tribe and aided it against the others. By 
the beginning of the historic period they had estab- 
lished themselves as rulers in most of the Polynesian 
islands, and had largely replaced the earlier races in 
Samoa, Tonga, and the Cook and Society groups. 
Many of the legends which deal with voyages 
within Polynesia are supported by the genealogical 
records kept in the various groups. It is possible 
from these to date approximately some of the later 
movements. During the period between A.D. 1000 
and 1300 there were a series of migrations from the 
Society group to Hawaii which seem to have strongly 
influenced Hawaiian culture and to have brought 
about certain changes in the language and physical 
type. The Hawaiians evidently looked upon these im- 
migrants as a superior stock. Many of their historic 
chiefs traced their descent from them. Between A.D. 
1250 and 1850 there were many voyages from the 
Cook and Society groups to New Zealand culminating 
about the year 1350 in the great heke (“migration”) 
from Rarotonga. Most of the historic Maori traced 
their descent from individuals who came during this 


SETTLEMENT OF THE ISLANDS 19 


period, although there can be no doubt that New Zea- 
land was known and inhabited at a far earlier time. 
The last people to pass into the Pacific were of 
Mongoloid type, much like the present Malays. They 
penetrated western and central Micronesia, but ap- 
parently did not reach Polynesia in any strength. 


FOOD 


The Polynesians and Micronesians were primarily 
fishermen. There was almost no game, and agricul- 
ture was possible only in favored localities. Their 
staple diet was sea food. It was a calamity for any 
tribe to be cut off from its fishing grounds. Crabs, 
shell-fish, and other slow moving forms were caught 
by hand. The natives of both sexes were expert 
swimmers, and this was usually women’s work. The 
octopus was a favorite food. Living in holes in the 
coral, it was gathered by divers who thrust a stick 
into the middle of its arms. The animal twined itself 
around the stick and could then be drawn out. It was 
also caught with a special type of long-shanked hook 
to which a cowrie-shell was attached as alure (Fig. 1). 

The pearl-oyster was of great importance in the 
low islands, its flesh being used for food and its shell 
for a variety of implements and ornaments. It was 
gathered by divers who went as deep as 120 feet. 
For three days in every year the western Polynesian 
enjoyed a special delicacy, the palolo worm (Hunice 
viridis). This curious animal spends its life in a bur- 
ro in the coral reef. Once a year, when its eggs are 
ripe, the rear half of its body breaks away and swims 
rapidly to the surface, where it bursts, scattering the 
eggs. This happens to millions of the worms simul- 
taneously, and the bodies rise in swarms. The natives 
caught them in nets and roasted them. The time of 
the rising can be accurately forecast. In Samoa the 
palolo rises in late October or early November on the 
day before, the day of, and the day after the last 


20 


Foop oi 


quarter of the moon. This was always a time of feast- 
ing, for the worms had to be eaten as soon as caught. 

The natives had a thorough knowledge of the local 
fishing grounds, which often included banks many 
miles from land, and knew where each species of fish 
was to be obtained, the proper bait for it, etc. There 





Fic. 1. 


Octopus Hook of Wood with a Heavy Stone Sinker. 
The octopus twines its arms around the shell, and is impaled by a sharp jerk. 
Hawaii. Case 35. 
were many edible kinds, but there were others which 
were poisonous and certain species which were good 
during certain months and deadly at others. In some 
islands a single species might even be edible in a few 
places and poisonous elsewhere. There were a great 
variety of fishing appliances. In the Carolines and 
Gilberts weirs of coral rock, sometimes supplemented 


22 ETHNOLOGY OF POLYNESIA AND MICRONESIA 


by cane work, were built in shallow water, and the 
fish herded into them at high tide. Simple stone weirs 
were also used in the Society and Tonga. Basketry fish 
traps were widely used. Ropes of coconut-palm fronds, 
sometimes as much as half a mile in length, were used 
in shallow water. The rope was laid out until a wide 
area had been enclosed. It was then gradually drawn 
in, driving the fish together into a small area, where 
they were speared or netted. In the Carolines and 
Marquesas, and perhaps elsewhere, tide pools, caves 
in the reef, and other confined areas were poisoned 
with certain plants. The poison stupified the fish and 
made them rise to the surface, but did not injure their 
flesh. The Gilbert Islanders were expert at noosing 
fish, catching eels and even sharks in this way. The 
noose was attached to a long pole, and another pole 
with bait on the end was used to entice the victim into 
it (Fig. 5). The practice of spearing fish was uni- 
versal. The spearsmen lured them to the surface at 
night with torches, and in daytime often swam after 
them, following their movements under water. The 
ordinary fish-spear had a cluster of long-barbed points 
(Fig. 6). In the Marquesas the giant ray, which 
sometimes attains a width of fifteen feet, was taken 
with harpoons which had detachable heads. In that 
group and Samoa fish were also shot with the bow and 
arrow. 

Nets were used everywhere. They were com- 
monly made from Hibiscus bark which was scraped, 
shredded, and rolled into cord between the palm of 
the hand and the bare thigh. Very strong nets for 
turtles or shark were sometimes made of coconut fibre, 
and the New Zealanders used the native flax. The 
netting needles were of wood, and were shaped much 


Foop 23 


like the European ones. Nets were of all sizes and 
many forms, depending on the use for which they were 
intended. Seins were used everywhere, and were 
sometimes over 100 feet long and 10-20 feet wide. 
They were provided with floats of light wood and were 


/) 
, 
y, 


A 
y) 





WIZZ 
eis 
ah 






Fic. ne Fic. 3. 


2. Fish-hook of Whale Ivory. Hawaii. Case 35. 


3. Fish-hook and Line. The shank of the hook is made of pearl-shell; the barb, 
of tortoise-shell. Sotoan, Caroline Islands. Case 7. 


weighted with stones, pieces of coral, or large shells. 
The central float of the Maori seins was often highly 
ornamented, and carved stone sinkers, probably net- 
weights, are found in both the Marquesas and north- 
ern New Zealand. The Maori also had very large 
funnel-shaped nets, sometimes as much as 25 feet in 


24 ETHNOLOGY OF POLYNESIA AND MICRONESIA 


diameter at the mouth and 75 feet long. The Mar- 
quesans did most of their communal fishing with a 





Fic. 4. 


Fish-hook for Catching the Ruvettus, a Variety of Pelagic Mackerel. 
Union Group. Case 1. 

















Eel Snare. 














Fic. 6. 


Wooden Fish Spear with Prongs of Hard, Heavy Wood. 
Peculiar to Matty and Durour. Case 11, 


large bag-shaped net which was alternately raised and 
lowered between two canoes. Its sides sloped inward 


Foop 25 


to a small central pocket in which the fish were col- 
lected. Smaller bag nets whose mouths were held 
open with hoops or cross pieces, or which could be 
closed with a draw string, were used everywhere. 
They were lowered to the bottom with bait inside and 
drawn up when the fish entered. The Marquesans had 
an ingenious method for catching parrot-fish. These 
fish live on mollusks, and each one has a section of 
reef which he patrols, driving off intruders of the same 
species. A bag net with a live parrot-fish tethered to 
its centre was drawn slowly along the reef. Other 


SN 
’ Peet SSS eae ~ COI — OT EE S } 
SSE ESSER SA 


ws, 
8 LN, es 1B 
« Ns 






Fic: 7. 


Fish-hook of Shell. 
Society Islands. 


parrot-fish would come out to attack the intruder, 
and both would be drawn up. Long-handled dip-nets 
were in universal use for small fish. Light ones on 
very long poles were used for catching flying fish at 
night. They were lured by torches and netted on the 
surface or in the air. Their flight is very rapid, and 
as the fishing canoes were narrow and cranky, it re- 
quired a good deal of skill both to catch them and to 
avoid capsizing. Casting nets whose edges were 
weighted with small stones or shells were important 
in Hawaii, but seem to have been little used elsewhere. 

Hooks and lines were universally used (Figs. 
2, 3, 7). One-piece hooks were usually made from 


26 ETHNOLOGY OF POLYNESIA AND MICRONESIA 


pearl-shell, the gleam of the shell serving as a lure and 
making bait unnecessary. They were rarely barbed, 
and the points of some of them were so sharply re- 
curved that it is hard to see how the fish could have 
taken them. One-piece hooks were also made of bone 
and whale ivory (Fig. 2). The Easter Islanders 
had stone fish hooks. Large and finely made hooks 
were sometimes worn as ornaments, especially by the 
natives of the low islands. There were many types of 
compound hook. The commonest was made from a 
strip of pearl-shell painted at the thick end and with 
a bone point fastened on the inner surface of the thin 
end. <A bunch of hair or fibre was often attached at 
the base of the point. Human bone was frequently 
used for the point, that from the jaw being preferred. 
Hooks of this type were used for trolling, and the fish 
would not take them unless the shell was of proper 
color. Experienced fishermen usually had several of 
different shades which they used according to the light 
conditions. 

The Maori, who had no pearl-shell, used a similar 
hook with a wooden shank inset with a strip of hali- 
otis shell on the side toward the point. ‘They also 
used a compound hook with a stone shank. In west- 
ern Polynesia and Micronesia the points were often 
made of tortoise-shell. Compound hooks for large fish, 
such as sharks, were made from wood with bone 
points. A special variety of hook with a narrow open- 
ing and a small, recurved, bone barb were used in 
Micronesia for catching the Ruvettus, a large pelagic 
mackerel (Fig. 4). Pandanus thorns, which are 
slightly curved naturally, were used as hooks for very 
small fish in the Marquesas. Small double-pointed 
slivers of bone were used as a substitute for hooks in 


Foop i 


many localities. They became wedged in the fish’s 
throat or stomach and held better than hooks. They 
were often employed with set lines. 

Everywhere there were ceremonial observances 
connected with fishing. These varied considerably in 
the different groups, but those of the Maori will give 
some idea of their number and general nature. Among 
them no new net could be used until an invocation had 
been uttered over it. Men carrying the net to the 
canoe had to be naked for fear that a morsel of cooked 
food might have touched their garments and so defiled 
them. If an expedition was about to set out with hook 
and line, all the hooks were collected the night before 
and made efficient by charms. No cooked food could 
be carried in the canoe. It was forbidden to cut up 
any of the freshly taken fish for bait. The expedition 
was usually accompanied by a priest who invoked the 
aid of some god. The first fish caught was put back 
into the water after being charmed so as to induce 
plenty of its fellows to bite. The next fish caught was 
reserved as an offering to the gods, and the priest took 
charge of it. When the party returned to land, three 
ovens were prepared, one for the gods, in: which the 
first fish taken was cooked, one for the chiefs, and one 
for the people. The latter were allowed to eat as 
soon as the priest held up one of the fish before a 
sacred place and uttered an invocation. 

In the Marquesas the fishermen of each village 
had a special sacred place presided over by priests 
who also superintended the actual fishing procedure. 
A number of small houses were built within the sacred 
area, and the fishermen slept there during the entire 
time that they were engaged in the work. Their food 
was brought to them. They were especially forbidden 


28 ETHNOLOGY OF POLYNESIA AND MICRONESIA 


to have any contact with women. Each sacred place 
had a number of small stone images in the shape of 
fish. One of these was exposed at a time, the others 
being buried in the ground. An image was appealed 
to as long as it brought good luck, but if the catch 
failed, it was buried, and another dug up and used. 
In the Island of Yap, in the Carolines, the fishermen 
were also segregated during the time they were work- » 
ing. Only communal fishing, such as the drawing of 
the large nets or expeditions to distant banks, was sur- 
rounded by such elaborate rules. There was every- 
where a good deal of individual fishing by both men 
and women, and this was much less regulated. Fish- 
ermen often had personal charms or fetishes which 
they believed brought them luck. 

There was very little hunting anywhere in the 
region. The Micronesians sometimes captured birds 
for their plumage, but they did not even hunt the 
chicken, which was found wild in the Pelews and 
Gilberts. The Gilbert Islanders captured the frigate 
bird by means of a bolas. This was a pear-shaped 
piece of stone or Tridacna shell attached to a thin 
cord of plaited coconut fibre 70 to 80 feet long. The 
other end of the cord was finished with a loop which 
was slipped over one of the fingers. A tame frigate 
bird was tied to a person to serve as a lure, and when 
a wild one approached, the hunter threw his bolas over 
it, entangling it and bringing it down. Only chiefs 
practised this sport, and often kept specially trained 
bird-catchers. Birds were the principal game in Poly- 
nesia also. In Tonga chicken-hunting was a sport of 
the chiefs. The birds were caught with nets on the 
end of long poles, tame birds being used as decoys. 
The Marquesans also caught certain species of sea 


Foop 29 


birds with long-handled nets. There were a few nar- 
row passes through which the birds flew in going 
from one side of the island to the other. The hunters 
concealed themselves there and netted them as they 
dashed by. The Maori captured shear-waters and pet- 
rels by means of a large net set back a little way from 
the edge of the cliff. On foggy nights the birds were 
lured into this with a fire and killed with sticks. Bird 
Snares were used everywhere in Polynesia; and in 
many of the islands bird-lime, made from the sap of 
the breadfruit tree, was also employed. It was © 
smeared on short sticks which were then placed in 
trees where the birds fed. 

The Maori captured pigeons with very long, slen- 
der spears, slowly working them up through the 
branches and finally impaling the bird with a quick 
thrust. They also had an amusing method of captur- 
ing parrots. The hunter built a small leaf-hut and set 
up beside it a slanting pole about twenty-five feet 
long. He then hid in the hut and tethered a tame 
parrot outside. The decoy was trained to call and bite 
things on the ground until a flock of wild birds came. 
They would alight on the sloping pole and begin to 
walk down it to the ground. As each bird came abreast 
of the hut, the hunter reached out, drew it in, and trod 
on its head. A whole procession of parrots would be 
lured to their doom in this way. 

Bird’s eggs were eaten in season, but seem to 
have been unimportant except in Easter Island. There 
was a cult centering about the taking of the first egg 
of the sooty tern. This was a migratory bird which 
arrived in great flocks and nested on a barren island 
off shore. The more important men in the clan domi- 
nant at the time sent representatives to the island 


30 ETHNOLOGY OF POLYNESIA AND MICRONESIA 


to await the arrival of the birds. The man whose rep- 
resentative found the first egg held office as Bird Man 
until the next season. He lived in a special house, 
was fed by the people, and did no work. A bird- 
headed human figure was carved as a memorial to him, 
and at death he was buried in a special sacred place. 
Curiously enough, the clan to which he belonged could 
not eat the eggs that season, although they were freely 
eaten by all the others. 

The only wild animals in Polynesia were the li- 
zard and rat. The latter may have been introduced 
by the natives. Rats were everywhere prized as food. 
They were usually snared, but were hunted with the 
bow and arrow in Samoa and Hawaii. In the Mar- 
quesas and possibly elsewhere there were wild pigs, 
descendants of domestic ones, These were caught in 
spring snares or brought to bay with dogs and killed 
with clubs. The wild boars were large and savage, 
and pig-hunting was a dangerous sport. 

The Micronesians had no domestic animals, but 
sometimes tamed the frigate bird. The same bird 
often visited families on two or three different islands, 
and was sometimes used to carry messages, small 
tokens with a pre-arranged meaning being tied to their 
legs. The natives of some of the low Polynesian 
Islands had the same practice. The Polynesian do- 
mestic animals were the dog, pig, and chicken. The 
dog was present everywhere in the area except Easter 
Island. It was a rather small animal with a shaggy 
coat, large head, sharply pricked ears, and a rather 
short, flowing tail. There seem to have been some 
white individuals. It was prized as food, and was 
also used to a limited extent for hunting. The Maori 
used its skin for clothing and made ornaments of the 


Foop ol 


long, white hair from its tail. The breed is now ex- 
tinct as a result of repeated crossing with imported 
animals. 

Pigs were present everywhere in Polynesia, ex- 
cept New Zealand and Easter Island. The original 
breed seems to have been black with a rather heavy 
coat of coarse, grizzled hair, but there was some color 
variation. The boars were often quite large and de- 
veloped long and vicious tusks. Pigs were usually 
kept tethered to trees by a cord around one leg. They 
were carefully fed and tended, and were everywhere 
highly valued. They were the natives’ main source 
of meat. The boar’s tusks were sometimes worn as 
ornaments. 

Chickens were present everywhere except in New 
Zealand. The breed was rather small and resembled 
the original jungle fowl, although there seems to have 
been some color variation. Chickens were fed on food 
scraps and allowed to roost near the house, but little 
care was taken of them. In Easter Island, where they 
were the only domestic animal, the natives built large 
chicken-houses of rough stone with tunnels for them 
to sleep in. A thief had to tear down the stones to 
get at the chickens, and the noise he made would 
awaken their owner. The skulls of the members of a 
certain clan were believed to have a magical effect 
on their laying, and were often placed in the chicken- 
houses to increase the egg supply. In other parts of 
Polynesia little attention was paid to the eggs. The 
flesh was eaten everywhere; the feathers, especially 
those of the rooster’s neck and tail, were often used 
for ornaments. 

All the islands were comparatively poor in wild 
vegetable foods. Wild yams were fairly important in 


oz ETHNOLOGY OF POLYNESIA AND MICRONESIA 


Samoa and the Society Group; the roots of a species 
of fern (Pteris esculenta) were a staple food of the 
Maori. The fern roots were first dried, then slightly 
soaked, roasted, and pounded to a thick dough. The 
Maori also made a sort of bread from the pollen of 
the bulrush. It was sweet and light, and was much 
esteemed as a delicacy. The Pandanus grew wild in 
all the tropical islands. It has a fibrous fruit which 
contains some edible matter. It was little used in the 
high islands, but in the atolls of the Marshall and 
Gilbert groups it was a staple food. The natives 
sliced the fruit, baked it, and pounded it to a dough. 
The dough was made into thin sheets, dried in the 
sun and again baked. It was then pulverized and put 
up in large rolls covered with Pandanus leaves and 
elaborately corded. In this condition it would keep 
for years, and was a valuable reserve against famine. 


The coconut was the most valuable of all the 
Polynesian and Micronesian plants. Its place of origin 
is still uncertain, but it was probably: introduced into 
both regions by the natives. It will not live more than 
a few hundred feet above sea level and grows best on 
the low coral islands. It has to be protected from 
pigs during the first few years, but otherwise requires 
no tending. The coconut was the staff of life on all 
the atolls. Its leaves provided material for mats, 
baskets, and thatch; its fibre was used for cordage, 
and its wood, for houses, weapons and even canoes. 
The liquid in the young nuts took the place of fresh 
water, while the old nuts provided a nourishing food, 
and were also the source of the oil with which the 
natives rubbed themselves to protect their skins from 
the sea water. 


Foop 33 


The nuts were husked by means of a long- 
pointed, wooden spike set upright in the ground and 
opened by a few sharp taps with a stone. The liquid 
in the ripe nuts was never used, and their meat was 
rarely eaten without preparation. A contrivance like 
a low seat with a projecting arm was used for grat- 
ing coconut. A rough piece of coral or a shell was 
fastened to the end of the arm. The operator, astride 
the seat, rubbed a half nut rapidly back and forth over 
this, catching the scrapings in a bowl placed below. 
Water was then added, and the solid parts strained 
out with a bundle of fibre. The residue was a thick, 
delicious cream which was usually eaten with fish, 
the other staple of the atolls. In oil-making the 
grated nut was put in a wooden vessel and left in the 
sun, the oil collecting in the bottom. In Pelew, the 
Carolines, Gilberts, Ellice group, and Fiji the sap of 
the tree was collected by cutting the end of one of 
the flower buds. ‘When first drawn, it was sweet and 
mildly acid, making a pleasant drink. The Pelew 
and Gilbert Islanders boiled it down into a thick, sweet 
syrup. The sap ferments rapidly and becomes highly 
intoxicating in twelve to eighteen hours. 

Breadfruit was important in most of the high 
islands, but required good soil and a fairly warm cli- 
mate. It would not live on most of the atolls. New 
Zealand and Easter Island were too cold for it; it was 
of only secondary importance in Hawaii. It was no 
doubt introduced by the natives, for it did not form 
seed and had to be propagated by roots or cuttings. 
In the coral islands of the Gilbert group the trees 
were carefully tended, the soil about their roots being 
mixed with powdered pumice, but elsewhere it re- 
quired no care except the protection of the young 


34 ETHNOLOGY OF POLYNESIA AND MICRONESIA 


trees from pigs. It was the main Marquesan food, for 
it flourished on hillsides which were too steep and 
rocky for regular cultivation. In most of the islands 
its bearing season lasted about six months, individual 
trees ripening at different times. It has a large, 
spherical, yellowish-green fruit which looks somewhat 
like a gigantic Osage orange. It is not edible when 
raw. 

The commonest method of preparation was to 
bake it in an open fire, peeling off the charred rind 
before serving. At the height of the season the ripe 
fruit was peeled, cured and piled together in heaps or 
in large basket-like containers until it had fermented. 
The sour paste was then stored in large, leaf-lined 
pits. This method of preparation seems to have been 
known wherever the breadfruit grew, but was most 
important in the Marquesas. There every house has 
its ma pit which was the main source of food until 
the next breadfruit season came. There were also 
huge communal pits, sometimes as much as twenty 
feet deep, which were filled in good seasons and kept 
as a reserve against famine. The ma would keep in- 
definitely, and the Marquesans relished that which 
was particularly old and full-flavored. They consid- 
ered it still edible after as much as fifty years. The 
wood of the breadfruit-tree was a favorite material 
for canoes and houses. In some of the islands of the 
Gilbert group it was grown for timber. 

Bananas and plantains were found throughout 
much the same territory as the breadfruit, but they 
were even less suited to the low islands and seem to 
have been unknown in the Gilberts. They also were 
introduced by the natives wherever found, for they 
were seedless and had to be propagated by root- 


Foop 35 


cuttings. Plantains were roasted in an earth oven, 
while bananas were eaten either raw or cooked. 

Sugar cane was present in all the high islands 
except New Zealand, but was of little economic im- 
portance. Clumps were often planted near the native 
houses, but there were no extensive plantations. The 
cane was chewed, but the natives had no method for 
extracting the juice. In Tonga and perhaps elsewhere 
the leaves were used for house thatch. 

Gourds were cultivated in Hawaii, the Marquesas 
and Society groups, and New Zealand. They were an 
important food crop in New Zealand, the green fruit 
being steamed in an earth oven and eaten either hot 
or cold. The dry shells were used as water-bottles, 
bowls, etc. (Fig. 9, p. 40). The gourd apparently was 
not grown in Samoa and Tonga or in Micronesia. 

With the exception of the gourd in New Zealand 
and of rice in the island of Guam in the Mariana 
group, all the regularly tilled Polynesian and Micro- 
- nesian food crops were root crops. The natives of both 
regions were good farmers, wherever the soil made 
agriculture possible. There was very little level land 
in most of the high islands. In some groups, notably 
Hawaii, the hillsides were terraced for gardens. The 
natives also built regular irrigation systems there and 
in the Marquesans. The principal agricultural imple- 
ment was the digging stick, a straight stave from five 
to six feet long, flattened, and slightly expanded at 
one end. The Maoris attached a step to one side 
of their digging sticks, so that they could be forced 
into the ground with the foot, but this was unknown 
elsewhere. In the Carolines a short-handled, mattock- 
like implement with a blade of turtle bone was used. 
Short spades with blades of wood or turtle bone are 


36 ETHNOLOGY OF POLYNESIA AND MICRONESIA 


reported from the Gilberts and from some of the out- 
lying Micronesian islands. 

Taro (Colocasia antiquorum) was the most im- 
portant crop. It was grown on all the high islands 
except Easter, even reaching northern New Zealand, 
and also in the low islands of the Gilbert group, al- 
though it required careful tending there. The natives 
distinguished a great many varieties which were di- 
vided into two classes—the dry or upland taro and the 
wet taro. The former would grow in moderately 
damp soil, while the latter had to have its roots cov- 
ered with water. The wet taro was the larger and 
more succulent. The roots, which look somewhat like 
a large rough turnip, were steamed in an earth oven 
and then pounded to a paste. In Hawaii the paste was 
allowed to ferment and-then thinned with water to 
make a sour gruel (popot), which was the staple food. 
The young leaves were also steamed and eaten as 
greens. 

Yams were grown in practically all the high. 
islands, but did not yield well in New Zealand. In 
the Pelews they were grown in large plantations in 
swampy ground. In the Society group they were 
planted on little terraces on warm, sunny hillsides. 
In Samoa, Tonga, and Fiji they were one of the most 
important foods. 

A kind of sweet potato was grown in Hawaii 
and the Society group, and was especially important 
in New Zealand. The Society Islanders built a mound 
of rich black loam nine or ten feet across and three 
feet high, planting a handful of vines, without roots, 
in the top. The Maori grew it in little hills which 
were laid out in orderly rows. The hills were manured 
every year with fine gravel from the river bed, but 


Foop 37 


animal fertilizers were unknown. The ground was 
carefully weeded, and the plants guarded from insects, 
but they were never watered even in the driest seasons. 
At harvest time the roots were stored in special houses, 
often elaborately carved and decorated, which were 
raised on posts. The planting and harvesting were 
superintended by priests who recited many incanta- 
tions. When a chief’s fields were being planted, it was 
customary to bring the skull of his father or some 
other ancestor and leave it in the field for the season 
to insure a good harvest. 

Arrowroot was an important product in the north- 
ern Marshalls, and was also manufactured in several 
of the Polynesian islands. There is no record of its 
introduction, but the plant is generally believed to be 
of American origin, and it may have been brought 
by early European voyagers. The root was grated 
and pressed through a sieve to remove the woody mat- 
ter. It was then washed until clean, the remaining 
pulp or flour being pure white and almost tasteless. 
In the Society group it was mixed with the milk ex- 
pressed from ripe coconuts, the mixture being cooked 
by throwing in red, hot stones and stirring it until it 
began to set into a jelly. It was a rich, sweet food 
much used at feasts. 3 


COOKING AND UTENSILS 


Fish and shellfish were commonly eaten raw, but 
all meat and most vegetable foods were cooked. 
Throughout the whole of Polynesia and Micronesia 
fire was made with the fire plough. The fire-drill is 
reported from the island of Yap, in the Carolines, 
but there is no record of it elsewhere. The fire 
plough consisted of two sticks—a small one, sharpened 
to a narrow chisel-point, and a larger one, flattened 
on one side. Both were commonly made of Hibiscus 
wood, but the stem of a coconut fruit-cluster was some- 
times used for the larger one. The operator laid the 
larger stick on the ground and rubbed the point of 
the smaller one rapidly back and forth along it until 
a groove was formed in the farther end of which 
wood dust collected. When the heat of the friction 
had produced a spark, a slightly longer stroke was 
given, burying the end of the small stick in the dust 
and igniting it. The dust was blown to a coal and 
dropped into tinder of dry leaves or shredded bark. 
The method required great muscular control, for the 
least error in gauging the length of the strokes would 
scatter the dust. In spite of its simplicity the fire 
plough was one of the most rapid methods of fire- 
making, experts being able to kindle a fire in thirty 
seconds (Plate I). 

Nearly all food was cooked in the earth oven, 
which was simply a hole in the ground which had 
been heated by keeping a fire burning in it. When 
the hole was hot, the fire was raked out, and the food 
put in wrapped-in green leaves. It was then covered 


38 


COOKING AND UTENSILS 39 


with more leaves, hot stones and ashes and earth. 
Food cooked in this way retained all its juice and 
flavor. Roasting was practically unknown. Certain 
foods were boiled by being placed in wooden vessels 
with water in which red hot stones were dropped, but 
this method was little used. 


Vegetable foods were usually pounded to a paste. 
Stone pounders were used for this purpose in Hawaii, 





Fic. 8. 


Food Pounders of Stone. 
The one on the left was only made on the island of Kauai, Hawaii. Case 35. 


the Marquesas, Society and Austral groups, New Zea- 
land, and in a few islands of the Carolines (Fig. 8). 
Elsewhere the pounders were of wood. The pounded 
food was often mixed with the milk expressed from 
the kernel of the ripe coconut. Sea water was usually 
used for seasoning, but salt, obtained from hollows in 
which sea water had evaporated, was highly prized. 
Food was served on large green leaves or in bowls, and 


40 ETHNOLOGY OF POLYNESIA AND MICRONESIA 


was eaten with the fingers. The Fijians had wooden 
forks, but rarely used them except for human flesh. 
Nearly all Polynesian and Micronesian utensils 
were made of gourd or coconut shells, wood, or bamboo 
(Figs. 9-10). Pottery was made in Fiji and Tonga, in 
the island of Guam, in Pelew and in Yap in the Caro- 
lines. In the two last-named localities its use ceased 
at an early time (Fig. 11). Its presence in Tonga was 





Fic. 9. 
Gourd Water Bottle. 
Fiji. Case 21. 


probably due to Fijian influences. The Fijian pottery 
was fairly well made and showed a considerable va- 
riety of form and of incised and modeled decoration. 
The larger jars were sometimes as much as three feet 
high. The smaller pieces were modeled from lumps of 
clay, while the larger ones were made by joining a 
number of thin flat pieces. The ware was never 
painted, but was sometimes given a glaze-like appear- 
ance by rubbing the freshly fired vessels with gum. 


41 


COOKING AND UTENSILS . 


Son 


a a 






TD * 
S, 
S 





Ny 





hic. 10: 


Coconut Water Bottle in Net of Plaited Coconut Fibre. 


Rewa, Fiji. Case 21. 


42 ETHNOLOGY OF POLYNESIA AND MICRONESIA 








Fic. 11. 


Pottery Water Bottle. 
Rewa, Fiji. Case 21. 





Ficai2: 
Priest’s Oil Dish. 
Kadavu, Fiji. Case 21. 


COOKING AND UTENSILS 43 


Gourds were largely used for water-bottles 
(Fig. 9). Very large ones also served as boxes for 
clothing, etc., in Hawaii and for potting birds in New 
Zealand. The Hawaiians sometimes decorated their 






SED SS 











=> 






oS 








UY 


——! 
{jf 
L, 


——o 






Fic. 13. 


Chief’s Meat Dish. 
Kadavu, Fiji. Case 21. 


gourd bottles with simple, stained designs, but the 
practice was unknown elsewhere. Large gourd uten- 
sils were usually carried in pots of coconut fibre or 
hash cord. Gourd shells were little used in Samoa and 
Micronesia. 


44 ETHNOLOGY OF POLYNESIA AND MICRONESIA 


Coconut shells were used wherever the tree grew, 
for bottles, also for small bowls and cups (Fig. 10). 
The Marquesans cleaned the nuts intended for use 
as bottles by making a hole in the largest eye and 
fastening them in the bed of a stream until the small 
fresh-water shrimps had eaten out the kernel. Cups 
were made from half shells which were often ground 
to paper thinness, oiled and polished. Both cups and 
bottles were sometimes carved. 








Fic. 14, 


Wooden Kava Bowl. 
Fiji. Case 21. 


Joints of bamboo, or sections with the septa between 
the joints pierced, were used as water bottles wherever 
the larger species grew. 

There were a great variety of wooden utensils 
(Figs. 12-16). The distribution of the various types 
has never been worked out thoroughly. Simple, round 
bowls were in universal use. They seem to have been 
of secondary importance in Micronesia and western 
Polynesia, but were the dominant form in Hawaii and 
the Marquesas. Many of the Hawaiian specimens are 


COOKING AND UTENSILS 45 


of very large size, and are beautifully proportioned. 
Oval bowls with round or pointed ends were also uni- 
versal. They seem to have been the dominant type in 
Micronesia, western Polynesia, and Fiji. They were 
also important in the Society group and Marquesas. 
Except for a few very shallow forms, platters rather 
than bowls, they were almost lacking in Hawaii. Some 




















Fic. 15. 


Old Popoi Bowl Repeatedly Mended by Its Owners. 
Hawaii. Case 34. 


of the Marquesan vessels of this type were as much as 
eight feet long. Large oval bowls with tight-fitting, 
domed covers were important in New Zealand (Plates 
II and III) and the Marquesas, and are reported from 
Pelew, but seem to have been unknown elsewhere. 
Large, shallow round bowls with four or more 
legs were important in Samoa, Tonga, and Fiji, but 
unknown elsewhere. They were used for kava-making 


46 ETHNOLOGY OF POLYNESIA AND MICRONESIA 


(Fig. 17). A large, oval, four-legged bowl was com- 
mon in the Society group, and a similar utensil ap- 
pears in Hawaii as one of the rarer forms. Legged 





Fic. 16. 


Wooden Food Dish. 
Matty and Durour. Case 10. 


utensils of any sort were quite rare in Hawaii, and 
were absent in the Marquesas. In the Carolines bowls 





Fic. 17. 
Wooden’Kava Bowl. Samoa. Case 30. 


were often provided with a hase, either solid or 
pierced. There were a number of peculiar local forms. 
The Marquesans had a type shaped like a European 


COOKING AND UTENSILS 47 


soup tureen, with a carved handle at either end. The 
Maoris made some of their bowls in the shape of a 
gourd with a curved neck cut in two lengthwise. The 
Fijians made many shallow dishes of peculiar shape, 
and these were used as oil dishes by their priests 
(Fig. 12). Micronesian and western Polynesian uten- 
sils were rarely decorated. The natives of Ruk in the 
Carolines painted their bowls red with a mixture of 
ochre and coconut oil. The Pelew Islanders sometimes 
inlaid theirs with pear! shell. Carving was infrequent, 
and was limited to a few simple angular designs. The 
Marquesans and Maoris carved their best utensils with 
elaborate and beautiful patterns. The Hawaiians 
never carved the surfaces of their bowls, relying for 
their decorative effects on fine proportions, high polish, 
and the beauty of the natural grain. 


KAVA AND BETEL 


Nearly all the Polynesians drank kava, a beverage 
made from the root of a variety of pepper (Piper 
methysticum). It was not used in New Zealand or 
Easter Island. Its occurrence in Micronesia seems to 
have been limited to Ponape and Kusaie in the Caro- 
lines. Kava was prepared by crushing the fresh root, 
adding water, and straining out the solid parts with a 
bundle of fibre. In Ponape and Kusaie it was crushed 
with stone pounders, but all the Polynesians chewed 
it. The chewing was usually delegated to young wo- 
men chosen for their good health and sound teeth. The 
saliva helped to release the alkaloid which was the ac- 
tive principle. Kava prepared from the chewed root 
was somewhat more potent than that made from the 
pounded root. The drink itself is cloudy white in color, 
and tastes somewhat like weak soapsuds. When drunk 
in quantities, it produces a mild intoxication. Kava 
drinking was usually a ceremonial procedure. When 
the drink had been prepared, the first cup was passed 
to the person of highest rank present. It was then 
given to the others in order of their rank, the master 
of ceremonies calling out the name and title of each as 
he passed the cup. A libation to the spirits of the dead, 
or to some god, was usually poured before the drinking 
began. 

The chewing of betel occurred only in the Pelews 
and in Yap of the Carolines. It was unknown in Poly- 
nesia. The betel quid was made by taking a slice of 
the fresh nut of the areca palm and wrapping it in a 
pepper leaf with a pinch of lime. The mixture has a 


48 


KAVA AND BETEL 49 


slight narcotic effect. It makes the saliva red, and in 
time blackens the teeth. Betel-chewing is a wide- 
spread practice in southeastern Asia and Indonesia, 
and was probably introduced into Micronesia from 
this region in relatively late times. 


CLOTHING AND ORNAMENT 


The warm and equitable climate of most of the 
Polynesian and Micronesian islands made clothing al- 
most unnecessary. In general the men wore a small 
loin-cloth, apron, or kilt, and the women a kilt, but 
there were many local variations. In Pelew the men 
went naked and the women wore two short, thick 
fringes of yellow-dyed coconut fibre which were tied 
around the waist with a string. In the Carolines the 
men wore a belt with bunches of bark in front and be- 
hind, or a strip of fabric passed around the waist, be- 
tween the legs, and tucked in behind. A kilt of grass 
or leaves was often worn on the outside. On Yap the 
women wore a voluminous skirt of leaves or bast 
reaching to the ankles and on Ponape a knee-length 
kilt of coarse cloth. In the Marshalls the men wore 
two thick bunches of shredded bark connected by a 
strip of matting which passed between the legs. This 
was supported by a girdle. The women wore a skirt 
made from two Pandanus-leaf mats, one in front and 
the other behind. 

In the Gilberts men wore a single Pandanus mat 
as a kilt, while women wore a short skirt of split coco- 
nut leaves, grass, or bark. In ancient Samoa the men 
wore a small apron of tz leaves, and the women a skirt 
of the same material reaching to below the knee. On 
dress occasions both sexes wore voluminous skirts of 
tapa or fine mats. In Tonga both men and women 
wore a rather long skirt of tapa. In Fiji the men wore 
a tapa loin-cloth made of a single strip passed around 
the waist and between the legs, while the women wore 


r 


50 


CLOTHING AND ORNAMENT 51 


a short skirt of dyed fibre. Chiefs’ loin-cloths were 
sometimes as much as fifty feet long. In Hawaii, the 
Marquesas, Society and Cook groups the men wore a 
similar loin-cloth of tapa, and the women a kilt or 
skirt of the same material. The Maori men wore a 
loin-cloth or a girdle with one or two aprons. A kilt 
of flax was often added. The women wore aprons or 
kilts. 

Upper garments were unknown in Micronesia 
except in the Gilberts, where the men sometimes wore 
a poncho-like garment of bark matting with long, 
hanging fringes. Garments of the same type, but made 
of tapa or fine Pandanus matting, were worn by men 
in the Cook and Society groups. Long cloaks were 
worn in Hawaii, the Marquesas, New Zealand, while 
a short cloak was worn by women in the Society group. 

The material most used for clothing in Polynesia 
was bark-cloth or tapa (Plates IV-VII). It was little 
used in Micronesia, for the trees from which it was 
made would not grow in the soil of the low coral is- 
lands. The best grade was everywhere made from the 
bark of the paper mulberry (Broussonetia papyri- 
fera), which was cultivated for the purpose. Inferior 
grades were made from the bark of the breadfruit, 
banyan, and other trees. There were some local dif- 
ferences in tapa-making methods, but in general the 
process was as follows: Shoots up to two inches in 
diameter were cut, and the bark removed in a single 
piece. The stiff, outer bark was scraped off with a 
sharp shell, and the inner bark soaked for a time in 
fresh water. It was then beaten on a smooth log with 
a short, square club. The faces of the club were us- 
ually grooved to assist in matting the fibres. New 
strips of bark were placed with their edges overlap- 


52 ETHNOLOGY OF POLYNESIA AND MICRONESIA 


ping the beaten portion and beaten out in turn. In 
this way the piece could be made as large as desired. 
As soon as the tapa was dry, it was ready for use. 
The finished product was pure white, and had the con- 
sistency of tough, soft paper. It was surprisingly 
warm, and would stand fairly Sense wear, but fell to 
pieces if it became wet. 

All the Polynesians except the Marquesans deco- 
rated their tapa. The Hawaiians dyed it in various 
colors, painted it with designs, and also stamped it 
with small stamps made from strips of bamboo. The 
Society Islanders painted it and stamped it with leaves 
and flowers dipped in dye. In the Cook group, Samoa, 
Tonga and Fiji, it was decorated by being stretched 
over a carved board or over a plate of Pandanus leaves 
on which narrow splints had been sewn, producing a 
raised design. It was then rubbed with red earth, the 
parts over the raised portion of the stamp taking the 
color, while the other parts did not. After rubbing de- 
tails of the design were often gone over with paint. 
The Fijians also had stencils and wooden cylinders 
from two to four feet long, which were carved with 
evenly spaced transverse rings or wrapped with cord. 
They were covered with dye and then rolled across the 
tapa, making straight parallel lines. Tapa was often 
oiled to make it resistant to rain or varnished with 
the sap of a tree. 

Except in Micronesia and Samoa mats were little 
used for clothing. The Samoans had very fine mats 
which were woven from strips of Pandanus leaf as 
thin as paper and only a sixteenth of an inch wide. 
These were as pliable as cloth, and were highly valued 
because of the great amount of labor involved. They 
were often decorated at the edges with red feathers. 


CLOTHING AND ORNAMENT 53 


They had another type of clothing mat, worn in cold 
weather, which was woven from strips of beaten Hi- 
biscus bark. Threads of the same bark were caught 
into the face of the mat on one side, so that it was 
covered with a thick, rough pile two or three inches 
long. Quite similar mats were used. The Micro- 
nesian clothing mats were nearly all made from Pan- 
danus, and were considerably coarser in Yap, in the 
Carolines, than the best Samoan examples. Those 
worn by the Marshall Island women were square, and 
were decorated with broad borders embroidered with 
dyed strips of bark. 

True cloth was made in some of the islands of the 
Caroline group and in Tasman, Lord Howe, Abgarris, 
and other small islands lying on the edge of Melanesia. 
It was woven from untwisted banana-fibre or from 
narrow strips of bark. The loom was a simple belt- 
loom. The natives of Kusaie, in the Carolines, pro- 
duced beautiful designs by tying together fibres of 
different colors to form the warp. Each section of 
colored fibre had to be of exact length. They had small 
bench-like frames with a gauge on one side on which 
the warp was tied before it was transferred to the 
loom. In some of the finer belts the warp had to be 
knotted as much as fifteen thousand times. The prac- 
tice is clearly related to the decorative warp-dying 
cultivated by many of the Malays, and may represent 
the original technique from which the Malay method 
was developed. 

The loom was unknown in Polynesia, but is known 
in Micronesia (Fig. 18). The Maoris were the only 
people who used textiles for clothing. At the time of 
their first arrival in New Zealand they no doubt used 
tapa, but the climate was too cold for the paper- 


ETHNOLOGY OF POLYNESIA AND MICRONESIA 


54 





“SI 9D “pues, soy] pioT 
"WOOT 


ea 





CLOTHING AND ORNAMENT 55 


mulberry. There was no native tree from which it 
could be made. They made a limited use of bird and 
dog skins, but most of their clothing was manufac- 
tured from the fibre of the New Zealand flax (Phor- 
mium tenax) ; see Plate XIII. The leaves were cut and 
_ dried, the outer skin scraped away with a shell, and 
the fibre steeped for three or four days in running 
water. It was then pounded with a stone beater, dried 
in the sun, and chafed between the hands until tho- 
roughly clean and soft. Thread was made by rolling 
the fibre between the palm of the hand and the bare 
thigh. Cloaks were made by the twining process. The 
warp threads, which were simply untwisted hanks of 
fibre, were attached to a cord stretched between two 
sticks set upright in the ground. The weft threads, 
which were of twisted fibre, were carried across in 
pairs and given a half turn at each of the warp 
threads. An interval of half an inch or more was us- 
ually left between one pair of warp threads and the 
next, but closely twined fabrics, not unlike coarse can- 
vas, were sometimes made for use as war cloaks. 
Cloaks were often shaped to fit the shoulders by means 
of inserts. Kilts were usually made from strings of 
partially cleaned fibre attached to a broad, plaited 
waist-band. The outer side of the cloak was usually 
decorated with hanging threads, like a long, thin pile, 
or with feathers. The quills of the feathers were 
caught into the fabric. They were arranged in over- 
lapping rows, so that the surface of the cloth was com- 
pletely covered. The fine hair-like feathers of the kiwi 
(Apteryx) were especially prized, but those of pig- 
eons, parrots, and other bright-colored birds were also 
used. The making of feather robes required much 


56 ETHNOLOGY OF POLYNESIA AND MICRONESIA 


labor (Plate XIV). They were highly valued. The 
Museum’s collection is the finest in America. 

The Hawaiians also made very beautiful feather 
robes, but employed a technique altogether different 
from that of the Maori. The base of the robe was a 
fine-meshed net made from twisted bark-cords. The 
feathers were attached in small bunches, their quills 
being caught into the knots of the netting. The under- 
lying fabric was completely covered. Long robes of 
red and yellow feathers were worn by chiefs. A 
feather loin-cloth was the emblem of royalty, com- 
parable to a European crown. The orange yellow 
feathers of the mamo (Drepanis pacifica) were the 
most prized. Each bird bore only a few of these, and 
thousands of birds had to be trapped to make a single 
robe. The chiefs kept professional bird-catchers. 
Feathers for robe-making were regularly exacted as 
taxes and tribute. The natives of the Society and Cook 
groups also seem to have made a limited use of feather- 
covered garments. 


TATTOOING AND MUTILATIONS 


Tattooing was practically universal in Polynesia 
and Micronesia. The appliances and methods were much 
the same everywhere except in New Zealand. Carbon 
thinned to an ink with water was used as pigment. 
The pricking was done with small-toothed blades of 
bird or human bone set in short wooden handles, like 
miniature adzes (Fig. 19). These were dipped in the 
ink and driven into the skin with a sharp blow from a 
short stick. The designs were often drawn on the skin 
before tattooing, but the best artists worked free hand. 
The process was painful, and the work was done a 
little at a time with intervals of a few days between 
operations to allow the patient to rest and heal. In 
most of the islands the tattooers formed a special class, 
and were well paid for their services. 

The Maori used tattooing implements similar to 
those of the other Polynesians, except that the blades 
were straight-edged instead of toothed. The designs 
were carved in the flesh, and the wounds kept open 
so that a deep groove remained even when the flesh 
had healed. In some places the soot used as pigment 
was first mixed with bird fat and fed to a dog, the 
black dung of the dog being then used. The tattooers 
prided themselves on never tattooing two faces exactly 
alike. In early historic times chiefs often used draw- 
ings of their face-tattooing as signatures on legal docu- 
ments. 

The extent of the tattooing varied a good deal in 
the different groups. In Pelew both sexes tattooed, the 
men being marked from the navel to the feet. On Yap 


57 


58 ETHNOLOGY OF POLYNESIA AND MICRONESIA 


in the Carolines free men and the women attached to 
the men’s houses were tattooed, the latter being 
marked on the hands and legs. On Ponape of the same 
group both sexes tattooed the arms and legs. In the 
Marshalls tattooing was a mark of rank, diagonal 
lines on the cheek indicating a chief. Nobles often 
wore elaborate symbolic designs on chest, back, and 
arms, but commoners were not allowed to tattoo the 
cheeks or sides. In the Gilberts men tattooed the 
breast, back, and legs; and women, the thighs and legs. 
Tattooing was forbidden to slaves everywhere in Mi- 























Fic. 19. 


Tattooing Instrument with Bone Comb for Pricking Designs into Skin. 
Samoa. Case 29. 

cronesia. In Fiji only the women were tattooed, being 
marked on those parts covered by the skirt and on the 
hands. It was believed that an untattooed woman 
would be punished after death. In Tonga the men 
were heavily tattooed from the waist to the knee, but 
the women were not marked. 

In Samoa the men were tattooed as in Tonga 
(Fig. 19) ; and the women, with a few small designs 
on the legs and hands. In the Society group the men 
were heavily tattooed, having designs even on the head 
and ears, though seldom on the face. The women, es- 
pecially those of royal blood, were tattooed on the feet 
and hands. In the Marquesas the men were completely 


TATTOOING AND MUTILATIONS 59 


tattooed, being marked even on the crown of the head, 
lips, and eyelids. The women were tattooed from the 
waist to the feet, on the arms and lips, and behind the 
ears. The Hawaiians seem to have tattooed every- 
where except on the face, but the designs were crude 
and widely spaced. Maori men were marked on the 
face and thighs, women only on the lips. 

Scarification was practised only in the Gilberts 
and Fiji, the women burning their flesh to produce 
rows of raised dots on the breast and arms. More elab- 
orate designs, made by cutting the flesh and causing it 
to heal in a welt, were also used by the Fijian women. 

Circumcision was practised everywhere in Poly- 
nesia except New Zealand, also in Fiji, but seems to 
have been unknown in Micronesia. Head deformation 
also seems to have been nearly universal in Polynesia, 
although there is little information on the methods. 
In Samoa the child was laid on its back, and its head 
surrounded by three flat stones, one at the crown and 
one on either side. The forehead was then pressed 
with the hand to flatten it, and the nose was also flat- 
tened. In Tonga the child was kept lying on its back 
on a hard surface with its head pressed against a flat 
piece of wood, both the back and top of the head being 
flattened in this way. In the Marquesas infants’ heads 
were shaped by long-continued rubbing, a long head 
with a retreating forehead being much admired. In 
Fiji the coast natives deformed their infants’ heads to 
make them short and round, while the interior tribes 
deformed theirs to make them long and narrow. The 
Maoris admired bowed legs and tried to produce them 
by massaging their infants’ limbs. A few of them also 
filed their teeth to points, but the practice was un- 
known elsewhere. 


60 ETHNOLOGY OF POLYNESIA AND MICRONESIA 


The Micronesians all pierced their ears. In Yap 
in the Carolines the hole was stretched with increas- 
ingly large rolls of leaves, girls wearing coconut-shell 
protectors over their ears, while the process was going 
on. In Ruk and Mortlock heavy ornaments were in- 
serted, dragging the lobes down almost to the shoul- 
ders. In Polynesia ear-piercing seems to have been 
limited to New Zealand, the Marquesas and Cook 
groups, Tonga, and Easter Island. Both the Cook 
group natives and the Easter Islanders stretched the 
ear-lobe. The Marquesans did not stretch their ear- 
lobes in historic times, but the form of certain of the 
men’s ear-ornaments strongly suggests that they were 
once familiar with the practice. In that group the ears 
were pierced with long awls of bone or tortoise-shell 
which were often beautifully carved, and were handed 
down as heirlooms. The natives of Pelew pierced the 
septum of the nose; those of Tasman Island, the side 
of the nostril, but these mutilations were unknown 
elsewhere. 


HAIR-DRESSING 


Micronesian hair-dressing was comparatively 
simple. Women usually allowed their hair to flow 
loose, sometimes cutting it off at the shoulders, while 
men usually tied theirs into a knot on top of the head. 
Polynesian hair-dressing varied a good deal in the dif- 
ferent groups. In Samoa women wore their hair short, 
with sometimes a small, twisted lock hanging from the 
left temple. Men wore theirs long, gathering it up into 
a knot a little to the right of the crown of the head. 
They frequently bleached it red with lime. Tongan 
women wore the hair long. In both the Society group 
and the Marquesas women bobbed their hair, cutting 
it off at the shoulders or above, while men arranged 
theirs in fantastic ways. Sometimes one half the head 
would be shaved, and the other half left long, or a 
path would be shaved down the centre, and the hair 
gathered in knots on either side, or it would be gath- 
ered and plaited into a broad tail behind. In the So- 
ciety group the heads of infants were usually shaved. 
Among the Maori unmarried women usually wore 
their hair short, while married ones wore theirs in 
long braids around the head. Men usually wore it 
long, gathering it into a knot on the back of the head 
which was held with a comb. In Hawaii the women 
wore the hair short; the men, long. The latter some- 
times shaved the sides of the head, leaving a roach 
down the centre. The hair was often cut as a sign of 
mourning. 

The Fijians had by far the most elaborate coif- 
fures in the region. Their hair was naturally curly, 


61 


62 ETHNOLOGY OF POLYNESIA AND MICRONESIA 


stiff, and wiry, and stood out from the head. Williams, 
a reliable early visitor, measured one head of hair that 
was five feet in circumference. The hair was dyed red, 
yellow, white, and dark blue, several colors sometimes 
appearing on the same head. Williams says, ‘One has 
a knot of fiery hair on his crown, all the rest being 
bald. Another has most of his hair cut away, leaving 
three or four rows of small clusters, as if his head 
were planted with small paint brushes. A third has 
his head bare except where a large patch projects over 
each temple. ... A mode that requires great care 
has the hair wrought into distinct locks, radiating 
from the head. Each lock is a perfect cone, about 
seven inches long, having the base outward; so that 
the surface of the hair is marked out into a great num- 
ber of small circles, the ends being turned in in each 
lock, toward the centre of the cone. In another kin- 
dred style the locks are pyramidal, the sides and angles 
of each being as regular as though formed of wood. 
All round the head they look like square, black blocks, 
the upper tier projecting horizontally from the crown, 
and a flat space being left at the top of the head.” 
Unmarried women wore short hair, but the married 
ones sometimes copied the less extreme men’s styles. 
Every chief kept a professional hair-dresser. Wigs 
were worn by those whose natural hair was not of the 
proper texture. When the hair had once been made 
up, it was protected by sleeping on raised wooden pil- 
lows which kept it from the ground. 

Most of the Micronesians had light beards ae 
usually plucked them out with a pair of small shells, 
used like tweezers, although the Gilbert Islanders 
prized their beards and allowed them to grow. The 
Samoans, Tongans, and Maoris also plucked out their 


HAIR-DRESSING 63 


beards and body hair in this way. The Society 
Islanders often plucked theirs, but also allowed them 
to grow long and braided them. The Marquesans often 
shaved a strip down the chin, allowing the beard to 
grow on either side, and divided it into tresses which 
were decorated with beads or teeth. The white beards 
of old men were highly valued for ornaments, and when 
a man wanted to make one of these, but had no rela- 
tive whose beard was white, he would sometimes hire 
an old man to let his beard grow. Most of the Hawai- 
ian men wore beards, and the Fijians had heavy 
beards, but seem to have paid little attention to their 
arrangement. 

Shaving and hair-cutting were everywhere done 
by means of shark-teeth. The tooth was set in a 
wooden handle, and the hair gathered in small bunches 
and sawed off. When this became too painful, it was 
singed off with a brand. 


PERSONAL ORNAMENTS 


All the Polynesians and Micronesians were fond 
of ornaments, but they were less extreme in this than 
the Melanesians. Body and face painting, except in 
connection with religious rites, was unknown except 
in Fiji, although the Pelew and Caroline Islanders and 
the Marquesans smeared themselves with a mixture of 
oil and turmeric. The latter bleached their skins be- 
fore dances by covering themselves with the sap of a 
vine and remaining in the shade for several days. 

Head-ornaments were little used in Micronesia, al- 
though wreaths of flowers and herbs were sometimes 
worn. Hats woven from strips of Pandanus were used 
in the Gilberts. The men of Ruk, in the Carolines, 
wore a long comb to the top of which a flat feather 
ornament, shaped somewhat like a bird’s wing, was 
attached. In Fiji and Tonga the commonest head-dress 
was a turban of white tapa. The Samoans wore orna- 
mental combs and also high head-dresses of bleached 
human hair with brow bands covered with rows of. 
iridescent Nautilus-shell plaques. In the Cook and 
Society groups warriors often wore high head-dresses 
of radiating feathers. In the Society group these were 
attached to a broad, flat semi-circle of coconut-fibre 
matting which was covered with shark-teeth, pearl- 
shell plaques, or small feathers. The Society and Tua- 
motu Islanders also wore shell wreaths made by string- 
ing small shells together and wrapping the string 
about a ring of tapa or Pandanus leaves. 

The Marquesans had a great variety of head- 
dresses. The commonest was made from porpoise 


64 


PERSONAL ORNAMENTS 65 


teeth pierced and made into short strings which were 
fastened perpendicularly on a band of coconut fibre. 
Crowns made from curved alternate strips of white 
shell and carved tortoise-shell, fastened at the base to 
a fibre band covered with small pearl disks, were also 
much used. A large pear! shell overlaid with a piece 
of tortoise-shell cut into delicate tracery was often 
worn on the forehead, and warriors wore a high head- 
dress made from cock’s tail-feathers. Aigrettes made 
from old men’s beards were usually fastened to the 
porpoise-tooth wreaths and shell crowns. Hawaiian 
chiefs wore ornaments of wickerwork covered with red 
or yellow feathers. The shape was very much like that 
of the ancient Greek helmet. The Maori wore orna- 
mental combs of wood or whalebone, or inserted one 
or more feathers in the hair. Wreaths of flowers and 
fragrant herbs and single flowers thrust in the hair or 
over one ear were used everywhere. 

In Micronesia flowers or bunches of dyed leaves 
were the commonest ear-ornaments. Inlaid tortoise- 
shell ornaments were worn by men in the Pelews; ear- 
rings of beads or shell, by men in Yap, in the Caro- 
lines. In Ruk and Mortlock of the same group the men 
wore a great number of tortoise-shell rings. In the 
Cook group leaves and flowers or small polished coco- 
nut shells were worn in the distended ear-lobes. The 
Easter Islanders wore round, wooden plugs. The Mar- 
quesans had a variety of ear-ornaments. The most 
prized men’s ornaments were disks cut from single 
whale-teeth. A long spike was left on one side of the 
disk, which passed through the hole in the ear-lobe 
and projected behind. The weight of the ornaments 
was borne by a band across the head. Large plates of 
whitened wood with similar spikes were also worn. 


66 ETHNOLOGY OF POLYNESIA AND MICRONESIA 


Women wore ear-ornaments made from narrow strips 
of carved human bone, the decorated portion project- 
ing horizontally behind the ear. The Maori wore long 
ear-drops of jade or bowenite, or pennants made from 
shark-teeth. They also inserted bunches of strips of 
white tapa in the ear perforations—the only use which 





Fic. 20. 


Chief's Necklace. Hook of Whale’s Tooth and Bundles of Braided Human Hair. 
Hawaii. Case 35. 


they made of this substance. A nose ornament of tor- 
toise-shell was worn by priests and old men on Lord 
Howe Island (Fig. 22). 

Necklaces of flowers and small shells were in uni- 
versal use and were, perhaps, the commonest of all 
native ornaments. Tooth necklaces were also much 


67 


PERSONAL ORNAMENTS 





Fic. 21. 
Breast Ornaments Ground out of Shell. 
Lord Howe Island. Case 13 


68 ETHNOLOGY OF POLYNESIA AND MICRONESIA 


used. Porpoise and small whale teeth were the com- 
monest (Fig. 20), but the Gilbert Islanders and Maoris 
used shark-teeth and the teeth of slain enemies. Single 
whale-teeth attached to heavy cord were worn as 
breast ornaments in Fiji, New Zealand, and the Mar- 
quesas. In Fiji they were the most valued of all orna- 
ments. The gift of a whale-tooth always accompanied 





Fic. 22. 


Nose Ornament of Tortoise-shell for Priests and Old Men. 
Lord Howe Island. Case 13. 


overtures from one chief to another. Necklaces made 
from a number of whale-teeth ground to long slender 
points and threaded together by a cord through their 
bases were worn in Fiji, Samoa, and Tonga (Fig. 23). 
In the Gilberts, Marquesas, and Hawaii necklaces 
made from many yards of slender, braided human hair 
were highly valued. In Hawaii they were worn only 
by chiefs, and had a peculiar hook-shaped ornament 
of whale ivory attached to the centre (Fig. 20). 


PERSONAL ORNAMENTS 69 


Necklaces made from cylindrical beads of shell 
or coconut shell were worn nearly everywhere in Mi- 
cronesia, but were almost unkown in Polynesia. In the 
Marshalls and Carolines those made from pink shell 
were most prized. On Yap, in the Carolines, the wo- 





Fic. 23. 


Necklace of Whale Ivory. 
Viti Levu, Fiji. Case 23. 


men wore a string of black-dyed Hibiscus bark as a 
necklace, and it was considered indecent to appear 
without it. Disks ground from the ends of large conus 
shells were worn as gorgets everywhere in Micronesia 
(Fig. 21), and occurred as a rare form in the Mar- 


70 ETHNOLOGY OF POLYNESIA AND MICRONESIA 


quesas. The Marquesans wore stiff collars or ruffs 
made of light wood encrusted with the bright, red 
Abrus seeds. The Tahitians had large semi-circular 
breast-plates of stiff coconut-fibre matting overlaid 
with feathers, shark-teeth, and plaques of pearl-shell. 
The favorite Maori ornament was the heitiki (Plate 
XIV), a small grotesque human figure carved from 
jade or whalebone, which was worn around the neck 
on a cord. It apparently represented an ancestor. 
Heitiki were handed down in families as heirlooms, 
being buried with the last member. There was a curi- 
ous rule that when a chief had been conquered and en- 
slaved, his wife had to send her heitiki to the wife of 
the conqueror. Large hook-shaped pendants and small 
adze-blades or chisels of fine green jade were also 
worn as breast-ornaments. A rare type of Maori neck- 
lace made from alternate beads and points of human 
bone with a knife-shaped pendant of bowenite is 
shown in the collection. 

Rings of tortoise-shell were worn in Tonga in an- 
cient times. The Hawaiians sometimes wore small 
ivory effigies of turtles attached to the finger with a 
cord. Bracelets were worn all over Micronesia, but 
were rare in Polynesia. Those of Micronesia were 
ground from Conus or Tridacna shell. The Hawaiians 
wore a variety of bracelets, some of shell, some of al- 
ternate pieces of black wood and ivory, and others of 
hogs’-teeth or boar-tusks. Men sometimes wore a 
broad band of netted fibre covered with shells on the 
upper arm. The Marquesans wore kilts, capes, knee- 
wrist and ankle ornaments made from long tresses of 
human hair fastened to bands of coconut fibre. Girdles 
of plaited hair-cord were worn by men in the Gilberts. 
In the Marshalls women wore a girdle made from 


PERSONAL ORNAMENTS 71 


coconut-fibre cord encased in a woven sleeve of Pan- 
danus. The length of the cord varied with the rank 
of the wearer, those of female chiefs being sometimes 
as much as seventy yards long. In the Carolines men 
wore broad belts made from a number of parallel 
strings of coconut shell and shell beads. Ornamental 
girdles were little used in Polynesia, but Maori men 
wore special war belts of flax. 

Fans were used everywhere in the region. They 
were usually braided from strips of coconut or Pan- 
danus leaf, and were used for coolness or to drive 
away insects. Those from the Marshalls, Fiji, Tonga, 
and Samoa are often braided from dyed strips of dif- 
ferent colors, and are unusually graceful and pleasing. 
The Samoan fans are sometimes woven in open-work 
designs. A fan of thin wood was used there as a rare 
form. The Marquesans and Cook Islanders had very 
finely woven fans with carved handles of wood, bone, 
or whale ivory. Those from the Marquesans are espe- 
cially beautiful, the woven part being whitened with 
clay, and the handle carved into one or more pairs of 
conventionalized human figures. Such fans were car- 
ried by female chiefs as insignia of rank and descended 
in families as heirlooms. In the Cook group men car- 
ried very large fans in time of peace. In Hawaii the 
chiefs used a special type of fan with a very short and 
broad blade, often almost crescent-shaped, and handles 
wrapped with fine cord of fibre or human hair. 

Fly-flaps made from long bunches of coconut fibre 
attached to a slender wooden handle were used in Fiji, 
Tonga, Samoa, and the Society group. In the Society 
group the handles were often carved into crude human 
figures. In Samoa a fly-flap was carried by a chief or 
orator as part of his dress costume. The specimens 


72 ETHNOLOGY OF POLYNESIA AND MICRONESIA 


from the Society group are so carefully made that they 
probably served some ceremonial purpose. In Hawaii 
large fly-flaps of feathers were an emblem of royalty. 


DWELLINGS 


? Practically all Micronesian and Polynesian houses 
were built of wood and thatch, but they were by no 
means crude or flimsy structures. The timbers were 
well dressed and accurately fitted, the thatch was laid 
with care. There were many little refinements of con- 
struction which one would hardly expect to find among 
an uncivilized people. There were highly paid pro- 
fessional house-builders in nearly all groups. Kramer 
estimates that a Samoan dwelling of the better sort 
cost its owner the equivalent of from $1200 to $2000. 
On town-houses and other large ceremonial structures 
the expense must have been far higher. 


The Easter Islanders made a few crude stone 
huts. Stone house-posts or pillars are recorded from 
Pelew and the Gilberts, but with these exceptions the 
use of stone in house-construction was limited to foun- 
dations. Throughout the whole of Polynesia except 
New Zealand dwellings and ceremonial structures 
were often raised on low stone-faced platforms. The 
Marquesan platforms were especially large and well 
made, those of chiefs being sometimes six to eight feet 
high. The forward part of the platforms was uncov- 
ered and served as a lounging place, while the house 
itself stood on a second and lower platform built on 
the rear of the main one. Cut stone was often used to 
face the smaller platform. High stone-house platforms 
were also used in Yap and Ponape of the Carolines, 
those of Yap often being double as in the Marquesas. 
In Fiji the platforms of chiefs’ houses and temples 
were often several feet high. 


73 


74 ETHNOLOGY OF POLYNESIA AND MICRONESIA 


All the Micronesian houses were rectangular with 
high-peaked roofs. The timbers of the frame were 
lashed together with cords of braided coconut-fibre 
(cinnet), which were often dyed in different colors 
and interlaced to form designs. In the Pelews the 
houses were raised about three feet above the ground 
on stone pillars, the floor being made of thick planks 
or split bamboo. The walls were made of interwoven 
bamboo splints or palm leaves. There were several 
doors which were closed with sliding shutters of the 
same material. In Ponape the houses had high, steep 
roofs and low walls made from bundles of reed or 
cane. The floor was laid with planks. In Kusaie the 
houses were somewhat cruder with very high gables 
and a saddle-shaped roof. The walls were low, and 
there was a door on each side. The saddle roof was 
also used in the Marshall group. It is said that in the 
ancient Marshall Island dwellings the roof rested di- 
rectly on the ground, with no side walls. The Gilbert 
Island houses were two-storied, with a low loft under 
the peak of the roof. They were frequently raised on 
posts. 

Large council-houses were used in the Pelews, 
Carolines, and Gilberts. Those of the Pelews were 
from sixty to eighty feet long and from twelve to fif- 
teen feet wide. The cross beams and supports were 
carved. Those in Yap were extremely high with a pro- 
jecting gable at one end, and had platforms in the in- 
terior. Both the pillars and platforms were carved. 
In both the Pelews and Yap these large houses were 
occupied by the unmarried men, and were tapu to wo- 
men at ordinary times. The council-houses on Ponape 
were decorated only with ornamental lashings. At one 
end there was a high platform, with a ladder, on which 


DWELLINGS 15 


the chief sat during ceremonies. Low platforms along 
both sides served as seats for other spectators. Part 
of the house was screened off as a sleeping room for 
the chief and his family. The council-houses of the Gil- 
berts were sometimes as much as 120 feet long, 45 feet 
wide, and 40 feet high. The sides were open, and there 
were no platforms. The ridge pole was painted with 
black bands and ornamented with rows of white shells. 

The Fijians used dwellings of several different 
kinds, the form varying with the tribe and region. Wil- 
liams says, “The form of the houses in Fiji is so varied 
that a description of a building in one of the windward 
islands would give a very imperfect idea of those to 
leeward, those of the former being much the better. In 
one district a village looks like an assemblage of square 
wicker baskets; in another, like so many rustic arbors; 
a third seems a collection of oblong hayricks with holes 
in the sides, while in a fourth these ricks are conical. 
By one tribe just enough framework is built to receive 
the covering for the walls and roofs, the inside of the 
house being an open space. Another tribe introduces 
long centre posts, posts half as long to receive the 
wall-plates, and others still shorter as quarterings to 
strengthen the walls. ... Along the sides is a sub- 
stantial gallery on which property is stored. . . . The 
walls range in thickness from a single reed to three 
feet.” Grass or leaves of various sorts were used for 
the thatch, which often extended to the ground. The 
walls were made from reed panels, the reeds being 
laced together with cinnet in ornamental designs. The 
timbers were also fastened together with ornamental 
lashings, but there was little decorative carving. In 
the better houses the ends of the ridge-pole projected 
beyond the thatch, and were blackened and decorated 


76 ETHNOLOGY OF POLYNESIA AND MICRONESIA 


with white shells. The temples were built on high 
stone platforms, and had very high steep roofs. 

In Tonga, Samoa, Niue, and the Society group the 
houses were oval, consisting of a rectangular central 
portion with rounded apses at either end. In many of 
the Samoan dwellings the central portion was short- 
ened until the house was almost round. House plat- 
forms, when used, were low, and the floor was not 
paved. The Samoan houses were not walled; elsewhere 
the walls were made of reeds or matting. Council- 
houses and temples were shaped like the ordinary 
dwellings. The only decorations were ornamental lash- 
ings of cinnet. In the Society group square houses 
were used by the poorer classes. The Easter Islanders 
used long-pointed houses shaped like an inverted 
canoe. The house floor was surrounded by long, nar- 
row cut stones, like curb-stones, which were socketed 
to receive the lower ends of the rafters. There was a 
doorway with a short porch in the centre of one side. 
These houses were sometimes as much as 120 feet long 
by 12 feet wide, and were shared by several related 
families. 

In Hawaii, the Marquesas, and New Zealand the 
houses were square, although there seems to have been 
a limited use of round and oval forms in the south is- 
land of New Zealand. The Hawaiian houses were usu- 
ally built on stone platforms, and the floors were 
paved. When the site of a village was subject to floods, 
the dwellings were sometimes raised on posts. The 
whole house was covered with long grass thatch, the 
only opening being a low doorway in one side. There 
was almost no attempt at decoration. Temples were 
shaped like the dwellings, but within the sacred pre- 
cincts there were usually “oracle towers,” tall, slender, 


DWELLINGS V7 


tapa-covered structures like obelisks, from which the 
priests delivered their prophecies. 

The Marquesan houses were always built on stone 
platforms, but only the forward half of the floor was 
paved, the rear half being covered with mats and used 
as a bed. They were long and narrow with steeply 
pitched rear roofs which came down to the ground and 
less steep front roofs supported by a row of low posts. 
The ends and front were often left open. Walls, when 
present, were made from small Hibiscus poles lashed 
together with cinnet. The doorway was in the middle 
of the front, and was made very low, for defence. It 
was closed with a wooden shutter in a slide. The posts 
were elaborately carved, often being shaped into At- 
lantid figures. There was a considerable use of orna- 
mental lashings. Each village had its men’s house, built 
like the dwellings, but of larger size. There were also 
decorated storehouses raised on posts which were some- 
_ times used as sleeping quarters by the old men. Both 
these and the men’s houses were tapu to women. The 
temples were rather small with enormously high roofs. 

The ordinary dwellings of the Maori were small 
and rather crudely made, with a light framework of 
sticks, and thatch which came to the ground. The door 
was at one end, and was protected by a veranda. In 
the south island the floor was often rather deeply ex- 
cavated for the sake of warmth. Each village had a 
small storehouse raised on posts and a large council- 
house which was also used as a dormitory. Both the 
store-houses and council-houses were elaborately deco- 
rated with carved and painted designs. Ornamental 
lashings seem to have been unknown. 

The Maori council-houses were by far the most 
beautiful structures in the Pacific. A fine example, 


78 ETHNOLOGY OF POLYNESIA AND MICRONESIA 


obtained by the Museum many years ago, has been 
erected at the south end of the Hall (Plate XI). It is 
one of perhaps six now in existence, and is the only 
one which has a completely carved front. Even with 
abundant labor the construction of such a house re- 
quired several months. Seasoned timber was used for 
the frame, that which had been buried in a river-bed 
for many years being preferred. The most important 
piece was the ridge-pole, which was hewn from a 
single log. That of the house in the Museum is sixty 
feet long, and weighs over a ton and a half. Two other 
very large timbers were required for the end posts, 
which were set in the ground just within the line of 
the front and rear walls. The ridge-pole was raised 
by means of sheers, the workmen lifting first one end 
and then the other and supporting the weight by scaf- 
folding. When in place, the end of the ridge-pole pro- 
jected several feet beyond the front post, supporting 
the veranda roof. The walls were made from wooden 
slabs set in the ground at equal intervals. The spaces 
between these were filled with panels of reeds fastened 
together with flax. Rafters ran from the top of each 
wall slab to the ridge-pole. All parts of the frame 
were lashed together with flax cord. The roof and 
sides of the house were covered with thatch, two feet 
or more thick. 

A low, continuous bed of grass covered with mats 
ran around the inside of the house. There was a small 
fireplace a short distance back of the door. The only 
openings were a smoke-hole at the peak of the front 
wall, a door and a window. ‘The latter were closed 
at night with sliding panels of wood. The posts, pan- 
els, projecting end of the ridge-pole and, in this case, 
the front of the house, were carved with highly con- 


DWELLINGS 719 


ventionalized human figures representing ancestors or 
mythological beings. After carving they were colored 
red with a mixture of ochre and oil. The rafters and 
underside of the ridge-pole were painted with scroll 
designs in red, black, and white. The reed panels of 
the walls were worked into designs. The finished 
house was the pride of the village, and so potent were 
the spells recited at its erection that even if the vil- 
lage was taken by an enemy, its council-house would 
be allowed to stand unplundered until it fell to pieces. 

Micronesian dwellings were often divided into 
rooms or stalls by light walls, but the Polynesian and 
Fijian houses rarely contained partitions. If privacy 
was desired, part of the house would be screened off 
with tapa curtains. In the Pelew and Caroline groups, 
Samoa, Hawaii, and New Zealand, small fireplaces 
were built inside the house, but these were intended 
primarily for warmth and light. Cooking was every- 
where done in small, detached houses, usually a simple 
roof on posts. Polynesian dwellings were kept scru- 
pulously clean, the house-wives sweeping their floors 
every few days with brooms of coconut splints and 
renewing the floor mats whenever they became soiled. 


FURNITURE 


The ordinary Polynesian or Micronesian dwelling 
was empty except for mats on the floor, a few baskets 
and utensils, and the bed-coverings and personal be- 
longings of the residents. Throughout most of the 
region the ordinary floor and bed-mats were made 
from strips of Pandanus leaf, varying in width from 
one-quarter to three-quarters of an inch. The leaves 
were often steeped in salt water and pounded to be 
made more pliable, and were trimmed with sharp 
shells. The plaiting was varied to produce designs 
and natural leaves of two colors, or dyed and undyed 
leaves were interwoven in simple patterns. A thick, 
springy mat made from whole Pandanus leaves sewn 
side by side was used in Ponape in the Carolines. 
Coarse, narrow mats woven from single coconut 
fronds were often laid on the floor under the finer ones 
to protect them from dampness. In Hawaii and Fiji 
the finest mats were made from sedge, and the Maori — 
used Phormium leaves and rushes. 

The natives commonly sat on the floor, but the So- 
ciety Islanders and Tongans had four-legged stools 
hewn from single blocks of wood. 'These were used 
only by chiefs and heads of families. Those of great 
chiefs in the Societies were sometimes as much as five 
feet long, three feet wide, and three feet, six inches 
high at the ends. In the Marquesas and Cook groups 
sloping slabs of stone were often set in the house plat- 
form in front of the house to serve as back rests. 

There is little information on Micronesian sleeping 
arrangements, but the beds of this region seem com- 


80 


FURNITURE 81 


monly to have been made from a few mats laid on the 
floor and rolled up when not in use. In Fiji, Tonga, 
Samoa, and the Society group the beds were of the 
same simple type, although those of Fijian and Tong- 
an chiefs were sometimes elevated on piles of tapa. 
The Hawaiians, Marquesans, and Maoris had perma- 
nent beds. The Hawaiian bed was a long pile of mats 
which often ran clear across the rear of the house. At 
least in later times it was often raised on a low plat- 
form. The Marquesan bed covered the rear half of 
the dwelling. This part of the house floor was not 
paved, and was bordered on either side by polished 
coconut logs. It was filled with a thick layer of grass 
or leaves covered with mats. Priests often slept on 
low platforms supported by posts. 

In the larger Maori houses the bed space was sepa- 
rated from the floor by a line of squared timbers, and 
was filled with grass and covered with mats. Pillows 
made from pieces of wood or bamboo raised on legs 
from three to five inches high were used in Fiji, 
Tonga, Samoa, and the Society group. They were also 
used in Hawaii in early times, but the commonest form 
in that group was made from leaves encased in a neat- 
ly woven, oblong cover of matting. In the Marquesas 
the log along the rear of the bed served as a pillow, but 
there were also pillows of leaves bound with tapa. The 
Maori seems to have used simple blocks of wood, with- 
out legs. Bed-coverings were usually made of tapa. 
In Hawaii several sheets were often sewn together 
along one edge to form a thick blanket. Tapa mos- 
quito nets were used in Fiji. 

In Hawaii, the Marquesas, and Tahiti many of the 
houses had stands planted in the floor. These were 
shaped very much like European clothes-trees, and 


82 ETHNOLOGY OF POLYNESIA AND MICRONESIA 


were used for hanging up objects which had to be 
protected from rats. In the Carolines and Fiji wood- 
en hooks or hangers suspended from the rafters were 
used for the same purpose. Many of the Micronesian 
houses had lofts used for storage. In the Marquesas 
and New Zealand clothing and ornaments were stored 
in long wooden boxes with tight-fitting covers. In 
Hawaii the shells of very large gourds were employed 
for this purpose. 

Candle-nuts were used for light in all the islands 
in which the tree would grow. The nuts were baked 
in an earth oven, cracked, and the kernels threaded 
upon the midrib of a coconut leaflet. When lighted, 
they would burn with a smoky, flickering flame. Each 
nut left a large cinder which had to be knocked off as 
soon as the nut below caught fire, and the light re- 
quired constant tending. In Hawaii and, rarely, in 
the Society group small stone lamps were used. ‘They 
were filled with candle-nut oil, and had one or two 
floating wicks of tapa. 


BASKETRY 


Baskets were made everywhere in Micronesia and 
Polynesia (Fig. 24), but very few old specimens have 
been preserved. There is little information on the 
ancient forms and techniques. Checker-work and 
twilled baskets were in universal use. Twined bas- 
ketry was highly developed in Hawaii, and was also 
used in the Marshall group and New Zealand. A 
coarse, open twining was used for fish-traps in all 
these regions, as well as in Fiji, Samoa, and probably 
elsewhere. Coiled basketry was used in the Carolines, 
Gilberts, and Samoa (Fig. 25). In the commonest 
form the coils were fastened together with strips of 
Pandanus which were knotted between the coils, giv- 
_Ing the basket an open texture. In another type, 
which seems to have been limited to the Carolines, the 
texture was much closer, and the knots between the 
coils were introduced by a separate element. 

The Tongans made some baskets of very close tex- 
ture, but we do not know whether they were coiled or 
twined. Coconut and Pandanus leaves were the fa- 
vorite basket-making materials in all the groups where 
these plants would grow. The coconut was univer- 
sally used for the coarser types. The frond was split 
lengthwise, and the midrib pared thin. A section of 
the midrib was then bent, and its ends tied together 
to form the rim of the basket, while the attached leaf- 
lets were interwoven to make the sides and bottom. 
In oval baskets the bottom was usually reinforced with 
a braid. Young fronds which had just begun to un- 
fold were used for the finer work. The material for 


83 


ETHNOLOGY OF POLYNESIA AND MICRONESIA 
The Maoris made most of their checker-work and 


Pandanus baskets was prepared and woven as in mat- 
twill baskets from Phormium or Freycinetia leaves, 


making. 


84 





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In both New Zealand and 


Fic. 24. 
Gilbert Islands. Case 5. 


They also made crude baskets from pieces 


Common Type of Basket. 
but employed many other materials, including strips 


of bark. 
of bark folded and tied. 


BASKETRY 85 


Hawaii the fine roots of the Freycinetia were used for 
twined basketry. In the Marshall Islands soft, twined 
baskets were made from grass. In Ponape in the 
Carolines quite large baskets were sometimes made 






















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Fic. 25. 


Coiled Basket Made from Thin Splints Fastened together with Strips of Pandanus Leaf. 
Gilbert Islands. Case 5. 
from knotted cinnet. Mariner says that in Tonga the 
finer baskets were made from the fibrous roots of the 
coconut palm interwoven with cinnet. 
Round and oval baskets were in universal use. 
Practically all coiled or twined baskets had these 





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Rectangular baskets of Pandanus 


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They were litte used in the Marquesas and 


ETHNOLOGY OF POLYNESIA AND MICRONESIA 
forms, but they were also common in twill and check- 


er-work (Fig. 26). 
or coconut seem to have been the most important in 


Micronesia, but were also common in Fiji, Samoa, and 


Hawaii. 


86 






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Fic. 26. 


Basket of Thin Splints from Midribs of Coconut- 


















SS Zee 


palm Leaves. 


Samoa. Case 28. 


Those made in the Gilbert group were 


often quite elaborate with double walls, interior com- 


New Zealand. 


The Fijian and Hawaiian 


ones were often made with a shoulder and a small 


partments and flap covers. 


_A close-fitting, 


central opening with a short neck. 


woven Cap Was used as a cover. 


BASKETRY 87 


Some of the Hawaiian specimens closely resemble 
common Malay forms. Flat, rectangular satchels seem 
to have been used throughout most of Polynesia and 
Micronesia, but their distribution cannot be deter- 
mined at present. They were important in the Gil- 
berts and New Zealand, but were rare or lacking in 
Hawaii. The finest Polynesian baskets were probably 
the large ones of Hawaii twined from Freycinetia, but 
the Tongan baskets were also very well made. In both 
these localities wooden vessels were often covered with 
basketry. 

Most Polynesian and Micronesian baskets are 
undecorated. Dyed strips of the material were inter- 
woven for form designs in the rectangular Pandanus 
baskets from the Gilberts, Fiji, and Samoa, and in the 
satchels from these groups and New Zealand. The 
New Zealand and Fijian designs were the most elabo- 
rate. Changes of technique were used with ornament- 
al effect in the Hawaiian twined baskets, the Samoan 
coiled ones, and the Maori satchels. The Tongans 
sometimes stained their fine baskets in various colors 
and ornamented them by working in beads or shells. 


TOOLS 


The most important tool in both Micronesia and 
Polynesia was the adze (Fig. 27). Axes were almost 
unknown, their regular use being limited to a few 
tribes in the North Island of New Zealand. The adze- 
blades were made of stone or shell. Shell blades were 
the rule in Micronesia (Fig. 28), stone blades being 
used only on a few volcanic islands in the Caroline 
and Mariana groups (Fig. 29). In Polynesia the use 
of shell blades seems to have been limited to Tonga 
and the low atolls of the Tuamotu group, although a 
few of them were carried to New Zealand by native 
voyagers. Adze-blades made from whole mitre shells 
were used in a few of the Micronesian Islands which 
lie on the eastern edge of Melanesia, but throughout 
the rest of the area they were made from the shell of 
the giant clam (Tridacna). These shells reach an 
enormous size, and adzes made from them were some- 
times as much as a foot long, three inches thick and 
four inches wide at the cutting edge (Fig. 28). The 
outer surface of the Tridacna shell bears a number of 
ridges which radiate from the hinge to the edge. In 
adze-making one of these ridges was broken away 
from the rest of the shell, the soft or defective mate- 
rial on its inner and outer surfaces chipped off and the 
outer end of the ridge ground to a cutting edge. In 
most cases the entire surface was ground and polished. 
Because of the original shape of the ridge such blades 
were commonly semicircular in cross section, and the 
cutting edge was also semicircular, like that of a 
gouge. They were shafted with the flat side of the 


88 


TOOLS 89 


blade against the handle. The Tridacna shell is snow 
white, extremely hard and heavy, so that blades made 
from it were little if at all inferior to those of stone. 

Stone blades were made from a variety of hard, 
close-grained volcanic rocks. In New Zealand the fin- 
est adzes were made from jade. In many of the islands 
there were regular quarries from which the stone for 
adze-making was obtained. Blades of volcanic stone 





Fic. 27. 


Adze with Shell Blade Set in a Wooden Socket which Fits into the Handle. 
Blade and socket could be turned so as to give the cutting edge any angle desired. 
Matty and Durour. Case 11. 


were chipped or pecked into shape with hammer stones 
and later ground and polished. Grinding was done by 
rubbing the implement back and forth on a large rock, 
sand being added as an abrasive. The New Zealand 
jade implements were usually sawn into shape with 
flint flakes or thin sheets of gritstone. Large blocks 
of jade were cut with a flint flake set in a handle of 
vines and drawn back and forth by two men, like a 
crosscut saw. 


90 ETHNOLOGY OF POLYNESIA AND MICRONESIA 


The form and finish of the stone blades varied a 
good deal in different localities. It is possible to dis- 
tinguish a number of types. Polynesian adzes as a 
whole were characterized by angularity, their faces 
being formed by a few nearly flat planes. They re- 
semble most closely those found in the Malay Penin- 
sula, Camboja, and China, and differ sharply from the 
ordinary Melanesian adzes, which have smoothly 
rounded contours. Small, rather thin blades of trian- 





Fic. 28. 


Large Axe with Blade of Tridacna Shell. 
Matty and Durour. Case 11. 
gular section, without grips, were used throughout the 
whole of Polynesia with the possible exception of 
Hawaii. They had straight cutting edges, and were 
hafted with the apex of the triangle against the 
handle. 

Rather thick adzes of rectangular section with 
straight edges and pronounced grips were the normal 
type in Hawaii, and were important in the Marquesas, 
Society and Austral groups, as well as in the south 
island of New Zealand. In the Marquesas, Society 


TOOLS 91 


and Austral groups they seem to have been specialized 
implements used for the final dressing of planks. 
Thick, narrow adzes of triangular or semicircular sec- 
tion with well marked grips and curved cutting edges 
were important in the Marquesas, and were also used 
in the Society and Austral groups, as well as in New 
Zealand. They were hafted with the flat side against 
the handle. Except in the Marquesas they seem to 
have been specialized forms used for work in narrow 
places such as the bows of canoes or the ends of oval 





Fic. 29. 


Stone-bladed Adze. 
Tahiti. Case 19. 


utensils. Many of them resemble the Micronesian shell 
forms; they may be copies of shell prototypes. 

In the Society, Austral, and Cook groups the com- 
monest type of adze was a rather thin blade of trian- 
gular section with a wide, straight cutting edge and 
small grip. There was often a distinct shoulder where 
the blade and grip met. It was hafted with the apex 
of the triangle against the handle. Blades of this type 
also occur as rather rare forms in New Zealand and 
the Marquesas. | 

Samoan adzes are usually triangular or quadran- 
gular in section, but are hafted with the base of the 
triangle against the handle. They were usually crudely 


92 ETHNOLOGY OF POLYNESIA AND MICRONESIA 


made, and grips were rare or lacking. Tongan adzes 
are of two quite distinct types. In one of these the | 
blades are round, oval, or semicircular in section 
with smooth contours, in the other they are thin, 
broad, and short with a rectangular or triangular sec- 
tion and well marked angles. Adzes of the first type 
are identical with those found in Fiji and in some 
other parts of Melanesia. Neither type has grips. The 
commonest type of Maori adze has a wide, thin blade 
of rectangular section without grip. The sides usually 
taper toward the poll. There are also a number of 
peculiar local types, the most characteristic being a 
thick blade with a curved outer face, straight back and 
sides, and pronounced grip. Blades of this type are 
also common in Easter Island. True axes were found 
in the north island of New Zealand. They commonly 
have narrow or pointed polls and smoothly rounded 
contours. Many of them are indistinguishable from 
Melanesian forms except for the material. 

The finish of Polynesian adzes varied considerably 
in the different groups. In Hawaii they were normally 
ground only at the bit, or on the bit and outer face. 
In the Marquesas only the thick blades of rectangular 
section were completely ground. In the Society, Aus- 
tral and Cook groups, Easter Island, and Tonga com- 
plete grinding was normal. The Samoan adzes were 
never completely ground, and even the chipping is 
erude and irregular. 

Adze-handles were made from the limbs of trees, 
a piece of the trunk being left attached to form an 
elbow. In direct hafting, which was the commonest 
form, a socket, usually shaped to fit the blade accu- 
rately, was cut in the outer side of the elbow. The blade 
was placed in this with a thin wrapping of shark-skin 


TOOLS 93 


or tapa and lashed fast with many turns of cord. 
Cinnet was used in most of the islands, but the Ha- 
waiians sometimes used bark cord, and the Maori flax. 
The lashings were sometimes dyed, and were usually 
laid on in simple designs. A heel, projecting for some 
distance above the handle, was usually left when the 
handle was cut, but this was lacking in some of the 
Marquesan, Maori, and Fijian adze-hafts. 

In the Society and Cook groups, and in the New 
Zealand war adzes, the heel was quite long, and was 
often carved. In indirect hafting the blade was fasten- 
ed to a separate piece of wood which was then 
lashed to the elbow of the handle. The indirect haft- 
ings were of two types,—fixed, in which one side of the 
piece bearing the blade was flattened and fitted snugly 
against the elbow of the handle, and movable, in which 
the upper end of the piece bearing the blade was 
circular and fitted into a channel in the elbow, so that 
it could be turned, varying the angle of the cutting 
edge. Direct hafting was the only form known 
throughout most of Polynesia, in Fiji, and the small 
Micronesian islands on the edge of Melanesia. It was 
also common in Micronesia, and seems to have been 
the dominant form in the Gilberts. Fixed indirect 
hafting was used throughout Micronesia, with the 
exceptions just noted, and, rarely, in the Society 
group. Movable, indirect hafting was limited to the 
Carolines, Marshalls, and Hawaii. 

Although scarcely to be classed as tools, the cere- 
monial adzes from Mangaia in the Cook group 
deserve special mention. A good collection of these 
is on exhibition (Case 33). The blades were made 
from black basalt, highly polished, while the handles 
were completely carved with fine angular designs. The 


94 ETHNOLOGY OF POLYNESIA AND MICRONESIA 


handles of some were nearly five feet long, while those 
of others were thick and square. There is little infor- 
mation on the use of these adzes, but some of them 





Fic. 30. 


Pump Drill. 
Gilbert Islands. Case 5. 
seem to have been cult objects, worshipped as symbols 
of the gods, while others were carried by chiefs and 
priests in ceremonies. 


TOOLS 95 


The Maori had a peculiar tree-felling tool con- 
sisting of a large stone blade set in the end of a long, 
straight handle. This was either swung back and forth 
against the trunk by several men, like a battering ram, 
or a sapling was bent around the tree like a huge bow, 
and the tool fastened to the string and repeatedly 
drawn back and released. Two rows of holes were 
punched all round the tree, and the wood between 
chipped out with adzes. 

Long, slender gouges and chisels of stone were 
important in Hawaii, the Marquesas, and New Zea- 





Fic. 31. 
Hoe with Blade of Turtle-bone. 
Mortlock, Caroline Islands. Case 7. 


land, but seem to have been little used elsewhere. They 
were primarily wood-carvers’ tools. They were usually 
held in the hand, without hafting, but both the Mar- 
quesans and Maoris had hafted chisels which were 
struck with wooden mallets. Small chisels and gravers 
made from shark-teeth or rat-teeth set in wooden 
handles were everywhere used for fine carving. Flat 
pieces of coral or lava were used to smooth the sur- 
faces of wooden objects; and smooth pebbles, for 
burnishing in the Marquesas. Rasps and files were 
made from shark or ray skin wrapped about pieces 


96 ETHNOLOGY OF POLYNESIA AND MICRONESIA 


of wood while wet. A hoe with blade of turtle-bone 
was used in the Caroline Islands (Fig. 31). 

Knives were usually made from shell or bamboo, 
but sharp-edged flakes of stone were also employed. 
None of the natives knew the art of pressure flaking, 
and they made no attempt to shape these stone knives 
or to resharpen them when they became dull. Knives 
made from a row of shark-teeth set along one side of 
a wooden handle were used for cutting up meat in 
Hawaii and New Zealand. 

The pump-drill was in universal use (Fig. 30). 
This contrivance consists of a straight shaft passing 
through the centre of a disk of wood or stone. Cords 
are fastened to the top of the shaft and to either end 
of a short wooden bar. In use the cords are wrapped 
around the shaft, and the bar forced down, causing 
the shaft to revolve. The disk acts as a flywheel, and 
the shaft continues turning until the cords are 
wrapped about it once more. The drill-points were 
made from stone, shell, shark or rat teeth, or even 
from the spine of the sting ray. 


MUSICAL INSTRUMENTS 


Both the Polynesians and Micronesiang were ex- 
tremely fond of music, and most of them used a con- 
siderable variety of musical instruments. The only 
exceptions were the Gilbert Islanders, who are said 
to have had no musical instruments of any sort, 
accompanying their dances merely by clapping their 
hands. Drums were nearly universal. Large cylindri- 
cal drums with heads of shark or ray skin, which were 
set on end and beaten with the hand, were used in 
Hawaii, the Marquesas, Tuamotus, Society group, and 
possibly in the Cook group (Fig. 32). In the Marque- 
sas the temple drums of this type were sometimes as 
much as eight feet high, and the temple precincts 
often contain stone platforms on which the drummers 
stood, resting their drums on the ground in front of 
them. Similar drums beaten with a stick of wood are 
recorded from Ponape in the Carolines, and the Mar- 
shall Islanders used a small skin-headed drum shaped 
like an hourglass. Little hand-drums made from large 
coconut shells with skin heads were used in Hawaii. 

In Fiji, Tonga, Samoa, and the Cook group the 
ordinary drums were cylindrical or canoe-shaped, with 
solid ends and a slot along the side (Fig. 383). They 
were beaten with short wooden clubs, and could be 
heard for miles. The Maori used drums of this type 
and also great wooden gongs, sometimes as much as 
thirty feet long, which were suspended from a frame. 
Small drums made from joints of giant bamboo with 
a slot along one side were used in Fiji, Tonga, Samoa, 
and the Cook and Society groups. In Tonga, Samoa, 


97 


98 ETHNOLOGY OF POLYNESIA AND MICRONESIA 


and Hawaii a series of bamboos of different length 
were thumped on the ground, closed end down, as an 
accompaniment to dances. A curious drum made from 
several joints of bamboo lashed together with their 
open ends covered with matting was limited to Samoa. 


ry aty Mf 
tt Wy /) 
th iN : iV. 
HIN \ \ 
AY 
\\ AS 


Niimeattt | 
AN: 


; ‘ 
| : hs 
a 


Lobes 4 
f te , 
{ 
all 
TiN 
AN (AV AIINA 
fl 
ea gt 
LT tay) Adis 
RARE 
als “4 i 
i] 





FIG. 32. 
Large Wooden Drum Used in Religious Ceremonies and to Accompany Dances. 


Hawaiian Islands. Case 34. 

Stringed instruments were used only in Hawaii 
and the Marquesas. The Hawaiians had a three- 
stringed musical bow with bridges. The strings were 
plucked or tapped with a short stick. The Marque- 
sans used a single-stringed bow, and seem to have also 
had a many-stringed instrument in ancient times. 


MUSICAL INSTRUMENTS 99 


Bamboo jew’s-harps were used in Hawaii, the Mar- 
quesas, and Fiji, with a crude form in New Zealand. 
There was a considerable variety of wind instru- 
ments. Nose flutes were used everywhere in Polynesia 
except Samoa, also in Fiji, but seem to have been 
unknown in Micronesia. Except in New Zealand, they 
were made from joints of bamboo. In playing these 
instruments the edge of the closed upper end of the 
flute was held against the septum of the nose, the outer 
nostril being closed with the thumb. The opening was 
not held tightly against the nostril, but at a short dis- 




















A, 
Uf 
es Ny ud 


















































Canoe-shaped Wooden Drum Used to Accompany Dances and for Signalling. 
Fiji. Case 20. 


tance from it, the flute being inclined at the proper 
angle to set the column of air within it vibrating. 
There were two or more stops which were manipulated 
with the fingers. Mouth-flutes were used everywhere 
in Polynesia except Hawaii, in Fiji, and in Ponape in 
the Carolines. They were usually made of bamboo, but 
there is little information on their form. 

The Marquesan flutes were closed at the upper 
end, and had a reed, made by shaving the bamboo thin. 
There were from two to four stops. The Maori flutes 
were made of wood or even bone, and were nearly 
always elaborately carved. Both the Marquesan and 


100 ETHNOLOGY OF POLYNESIA AND MICRONESIA 


Society Islanders knew that the pitch of a flute could 
be modified by changing its length, and both had de- 
veloped tunable forms. In the Marquesas these were 
made from two pieces of bamboo which slid one inside 
the other, the lower piece being worked back and 
forth until the pitch was correct. Several flutes were 
sometimes tuned in this way and played together as 
an orchestra at dances. 

Whistles seem to have been limited to the Mar- 
quesas and New Zealand. In New Zealand they were 
used primarily for signaling in war. They were about 
three inches and a half long, of hard polished wood 
inlaid with Haliotis shell, and were worn around the 
neck. Wooden trumpets were also limited to the Mar- 
quesas and New Zealand. In the Marquesas they were 
made from single pieces of wood hollowed out and 
provided with bamboo mouthpieces. In New Zealand 
they were made from two pieces of wood hollowed out 
and joined lengthwise. Shell trumpets were used 
everywhere. They were commonly made from Triton 
shells, but Cassis shells were used in Hawaii and to 
some extent in the Marquesas. In the Society Islands 
they were provided with bamboo mouthpieces, three 
feet long, which projected from the side at an 
angle. In the Marquesas nut shells, or very small | 
gourds, also placed on the side, were used as mouth- 
pieces. In New Zealand the mouthpieces were of 
carved wood, but were fastened to the tip of the shell. 
Elsewhere no mouthpiece was used. Panpipes, made 
from several pieces of bamboo of graduated length, 
were used in Fiji and Tonga. 

Vocal music was also well developed, especially in 
Hawaii and the Society group. The Hawalians had 
even advanced to the point of having choruses which 





MUSICAL INSTEUMUNTS 101 





8: ang i in parts. Modern Hawaiian music is largely the 
work of European composers, and the famous ukulele 
is a Portugese instrument quite unknown to the an- 
cient Hawaiians. 





cae) gear AACN Ai AE le rake 


TRANSPORTATION 


Land transportation was relatively unimportant. 
There were no draught animals or vehicles, and most 
of the roads were nothing more than narrow trails 
following the natural contours of the ground. Burdens 
were carried by means of a pole across the shoulder, 
an equal weight being hung at each end. The Maoris 
frequently carried burdens on their backs, but else- 
where the preference for the shoulder pole was so 
strong that when a native had an indivisible load, like 
a live pig, he would tie a rock to the other end of his 
pole to balance it and carry both. In the Society group 
chiefs often rode on the shoulders of attendants, but 
this was to prevent their feet touching the ground and 
rendering it tapu. 

Water transportation was everywhere important. 
Canoes were in nearly universal use, but were lacking 
in a few localities (Plate X). In Mangareva, in the 
southern Tuamotus, the natives used triangular rafts’ 
with masts and sails. The Chatham Islanders used a 
semi-raft, shaped like a boat, with a wooden frame 
stuffed with bundles of the flower stalks of Phormium 
tenax or the bladders of the kelp-fish. Some of this. 
craft were from thirty to thirty-five feet long. Balsa- 
like rafts made from bundles of bamboo were occa- 
sionally used in most of the Polynesian groups. The 
Gilbert Islanders had carefully made rafts of squared 
timber which were used for fishing. 

Simple dug-out canoes, made from single logs, 
were used in all the localities, where there was large 
enough timber. In Hawaii, the Marquesas, the Austral 
and Cook groups, Samoa and New Zealand the dugout 


102 


TRANSPORTATION 103 


was modified by the addition of pieces at the bow and 
stern, which partially decked over the ends, and of a 
long plank or row of planks along each side. In Ha- 
waii, the Marquesas, and New Zealand even the 
largest canoes seem to have been of this type. In the 
Marquesas the dugout body was sometimes lengthened 
by using two logs fitted together at the ends. In Ha- 
waii great cedar logs from British Columbia, cast up 
as driftwood, were used for the largest craft. 
Throughout Micronesia and in Fiji, Tonga, Samoa, 
and the Society and Tuamotu groups, all but the 
smallest canoes were made from a number of pieces 
of wood accurately cut and fitted. This form of con- 
struction probably originated in the coral islands, 
where large timber for dugouts was lacking, but it 
mace possible the construction of very large craft. 

Williams gives the dimensions of a Fijian canoe, 
not the largest on record, as follows: ‘‘Length, 99 feet, 
3 inches. Draught, 2 feet, 6 inches. Length of mast, 
62 feet, 3 inches. Length of yards, 83 feet.” In all the 
built-up canoes the parts were lashed together with 
cord. The seams were usually caulked with coconut 
fibre, and were sometimes pitched with breadfruit 
gum. In Fiji, Tonga, Samoa, and the Society group, 
the lashings passed through flanges left on the inner 
sides of the planks, and were invisible on the outside. 
The pieces were so closely fitted that the joints could 
hardly be seen. In Micronesia and throughout the rest 
of Polynesia, the lashing holes were cut clear through, 
so that the lashings were visible on the outside, and 
the seams were usually covered with strips of wood or 
bamboo. 

In the Marquesas, Austral and Cook groups, and 
New Zealand, the bow pieces of built-up canoes with 


104 ETHNOLOGY OF POLYNESIA AND MICRONESIA 


dug-out bodies projected horizontally for some dis- 
tance, usually terminating in a carved figure-head, 
while the stern piece bore a narrow upcurved fin which 
rose several feet above the canoe. The large Society 
Island canoes, although of plank construction, had 
either a projection or a high, upward curving piece at 
the bow, while the whole stern of the canoe was curved 
upward into the air. The Fijian, Tongan, Samoan, 
and Gilbert Island canoes, on the other hand, were 
flush for their entire length, although some of the 
smaller Samoan forms had a slight horizontal projec- 
tion at the bow. The larger Marshall and Caroline 
Island canoes curved upward at both ends, having a 
profile not unlike that of an old Norse long ship. 

Even the plank canoes were extremely narrow in 
proportion to their length and would capsize readily. 
Outriggers were in universal use, although they were 
becoming obsolete in New Zealand at the beginning 
of the historic period. | 

The outrigger was a straight log, somewhat 
shorter than the canoe, which was fastened to the 
canoe by crosspieces and floated in the water a few 
feet away from the side. There were two types of out- 
rigger attachment. In one the crosspieces bent down- 
ward at their ends, and were attached directly to the 
float. In the other the crosspieces were straight, and 
a separate member was introduced between them and 
the float. The direct type was normal in Hawaii, and 
was used in ancient times in the Marquesas. In the 
Society Island fishing canoes, the attachment of the 
forward crosspiece was indirect; and that of the rear 
piece, direct. Elsewhere only the indirect attachment 
was used. None of the natives employed more than 
one outrigger in historic times. In the large Microne- 


TRANSPORTATION 105 


sian sailing canoes a platform was usually built on the 
erosspieces, and when the wind was from the outrig- 
ger side, men and cargo were shifted to this to hold 
the outrigger down. In Marshall Island canoes the 
hull was asymmetrical, being curved on the side away 
from the outrigger and nearly flat on that toward it. 

Double canoes were in universal use in Polynesia 
and in Fiji, but seem to have been unknown in Micro- 
nesia. In Hawaii, the Marquesas, Society group, and 
New Zealand, they were made from two hulls of equal 
size joined together by numerous crosspieces. The 
crosspieces were decked over, and a small house was 
built on this deck if the voyage was to be a long one. 
The same hull might be used alone or as part of a 
double canoe. In Fiji, Tonga, and Samoa, the hulls of 
double canoes were of different size, and were lashed 
together permanently. The smaller hull was really an 
enlarged outrigger, the crew storing their supplies in 
it, but having their quarters in the larger hull and on 
the deck between the two. When sailing in a high 
wind, the smaller hull would often be lifted clear of 
the water. 

Both paddles and sails were used for propulsion. 
The Chatham Islanders rowed their clumsy craft, 
facing the stern and bracing their oars against a thole- 
pin, but this method was unknown elsewhere. It seems 
probable that very large double-sailing canoes were 
everywhere sculled in a calm, the paddlers dipping 
their blades vertically and levering them against the 
crosspieces between the two hulls. With these excep- 
tions, the natives paddled in ordinary fashion, the 
paddlers being seated on thwarts, facing the bow. 
The Marquesans, Mangarevans, and Easter Islanders 
had a peculiar form of paddle with a broad, slightly 


106 ETHNOLOGY OF POLYNESIA AND MICRONESIA 


dished blade below which a curved knob projected. 
The blades of Micronesian, Maori, and to a lesser 
degree, Samoan paddles were narrow and pointed. 
The Fijian, Cook and Society group, and Hawaiian 
ones were broad and oval (Plate VIII). 

Sails were in universal use, but there were im- 
portant local differences in their form. They were 
commonly made of Pandanus matting, although a few 
of the easternmost Micronesians used cloth. Hawaiian, 
Marquesan, and Maori sails were in the form of a 
triangle with the apex at the bottom. One side of the 
sail was fastened to the mast, and the other to a boom 
which sloped upward at an angle of about 45 degrees. 
The Samoans used this form on their smaller craft, 
and the Society Islanders employed a modification of 
it. The Society Island sail was narrow and nearly 
oblong; the upper end of the boom was curved inward, 
like a crab-claw. The triangular sail was a rather poor 
contrivance. It gave little surface for its weight and 
size; it was impossible to tack with it. | 

In Fiji, Tonga, Samoa, and throughout Micro- 
nesia, the sail was of lateen type. It was triangular, 
with yards along two sides, and was suspended from 

he masthead. Its forward end, where the two yards 
joined, rested on the deck just behind the bow. A curi- 
ous method was used in tacking. The ropes suspending 
the sail were slacked off, and the end of it which rested 
on the deck at the bow lifted bodily and carried to the 
stern, where it was fastened once more. As the two 
ends of the boat were exactly alike, the stern then 
became the bow, and the ship bore away on its new 
tack. In spite of the seeming clumsiness of this device, 
the lateen sail was highly effective. Captain Cook 
testifies that the natives could sail as close to the wind 


TRANSPORTATION 107 


as his own square-rigged ships, while the narrow beam 
and shallow draught of their canoes made them ex- 
tremely fast. 


WEAPONS AND WARFARE 


The principal Polynesian and Micronesian weap- 
ons were the sling, spear, and club. The bow was 
important in Fiji and in Tonga, where its use in war 
was probably due to Fijian influence. The Tongan and 
Fijian bows were straight, from five to six feet long. 
The arrows were made from cane with barbed points 
of hard wood or bone, and had no feathers. A single 
Maori tribe is credited with using the bow as a weap- 
on. The natives of Ponape, in the Carolines, also made 
a limited use of it, employing wooden arrows tipped 
with ray spines. The Ponapeans had traditions of a 
race of dwarf, black aborigines who used the bow in 
war. Throughout the rest of Polynesia and Microne- 
sia the bow was employed only in hunting or for 
sport. 

The sling was known everywhere, and was an 
important weapon in the Carolines (Fig. 34), Mar- 
shalls, Hawaii, the Marquesas, the Society and Cook 
groups, and to a lesser extent in Samoa. It was little 
used in the Gilberts, Tonga, and Fiji, while the Maori 
employed it mainly for hurling red hot stones into the 
besieged towns to fire the thatch. The Hawaiian and 
Marshall Island slings were crude affairs made from 
braided leaves. Those of the Carolines, Marquesas, 
and Society group were carefully plaited from coconut 
fibre or bark, and often showed beautiful workman- 
ship. The Marquesans often wore theirs as headbands, 
especially when attending intertribal affairs which 
might end in a fight. The Marquesan and Society 
Island slings were sometimes as much as six feet long, 


108 


109 


WEAPONS AND WARFARE 





eo 
Sling. 
Ruk, Caroline Islands. Case 7, 





Fic 








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SS SS SSS SSS SSS SS 






SSL Na 

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SSS LEI LT LT A a 
Se ESS 





110 ETHNOLOGY OF POLYNESIA AND MICRONESIA 


giving the slingers great range and force. Porter, who 
fought against the Marquesans, says their fire was al- 
most as destructive as musketry. In the Carolines, 
Marianas, Hawaii, and the Marquesas, the sling-stones 
were carefully shaped cylinders with pointed ends. 
The rotation given to them at the moment of release 
made them fly and strike point first, like a bullet, while 








Fic. 35. 


Wooden Sword. 
Matty and Durour Case 9. 


their shape considerably increased the range. Warri- 
ors carried bags of these prepared stones with them, 
using rough stones at short range, or when their other 
ammunition was exhausted. 

A wooden sword from Matty and Durour is illus- 
trated in Fig. 35. 

Spears were of many types (Fig. 36). Light 
javelins were used as missiles, and heavier forms at 





Fic. 36. 


Wooden Spear of Hard, Heavy Wood. 
Viti Levu, Fiji. Case 25. 
close quarters. The throwing stick was employed in 
the Pelews, but was unknown elsewhere. The Marque- 
sans used a throwing cord, which made the spear 
rotate in flight and increased its accuracy, and the 
Maori had a throwing whip. This was a straight stick 
with a long lash. The dart was set in the ground at 
an angle, to the right of and slightly behind the throw- 
er. The lash was wrapped about it, and it was jerked 


WEAPONS AND WARFARE 111 


upward and forward by a quick movement of the 
thrower’s body and arms. Sometimes two men would 
wrap their whips around a bundle of darts and hurl 
them at a single cast. The whip gave long range, but 
little accuracy; it was mainly used against besieged 
towns. Javelins were, as a rule, less elaborately made 
than the heavy spears, and were often nothing more 
than hardwood sticks sharpened to a point. Javelins 
with carved wooden barbs, or tipped with ray spines, 
were occasionally used everywhere, while the Marque- 
sans had a type in which the shaft was pierced below 
the head, so that it would break off in the wound. 
Thrusting spears were used everywhere; there 
were a great variety of forms. In the Pelews and Caro- 
lines they were made of bamboo, about twelve feet 
long, with barbed heads of hard wood or ray spines. 
The Marshall Islanders used plain or barbed woocen 
lances. In the southern islands of this group the 
spears were sometimes edged with shark-teeth, as in 
the Gilberts. The Gilbert Islanders used plain un- 
barbed lances of heavy wood, lances with long woocen 
guards made from separate pieces of wood lashed to 
the shaft, and lances set with rows of shark-teeth. The 
Fijian spears were the most elaborate in the region. 
They were made from single pieces of wood, from 
twelve to eighteen feet long, the first two to three feet 
of the shaft being carved into long barbs and often 
decorated with elaborate sennit lashings. They were 
often tipped with bundles of ray spines. The Tongans 
also used elaborately barbed spears, but there is no in- 
formation on their form. Samoan spears were mace 
from coconut wood, and were about eight feet long. 
They were triangular in section for the first two or 
three feet, and were carved with rather short, but 


112 ETHNOLOGY OF POLYNESIA AND MICRONESIA 


elaborate barbs which pointed both forward and back- 
ward. Plain spears tipped with ray spines were also 
used. 

Barbed spears very much like the Samoan ones 
were likewise used in the Cook group, but the favorite 
type there had a long, broad, diamond-shaped head with 
a longitudinal rib and no barbs. The butt of this spear 
was also sharp, and low ridges were left around the 
shaft at the base of the head and about a foot above 
the butt. These weapons were commonly from eight 
to ten feet long, and were used for both striking and 
thrusting. Similar spears about six feet long were 
used by the Urewera tribe of the Maoris. There can be 
little doubt that the spears of this type are wooden 
copies of metal forms, but it is impossible to tell how 
or when the Polynesians became acquainted with such 
weapons. They show little resemblence to any of the 
types used in Malaysia in historic times. 

The Hawaiians, Marquesans, and Society Islan- 
ders used heavy spears of iron wood from ten to twenty 
feet long. These were plain, or had low, backward 
sloping barbs along one or both sides. The Marque- 
sans also had a peculiar form with three long barbs, 
deeply notched at the base, on one side. When an 
enemy had been impaled, the shaft was broken off 
behind the first barb by a quick twist, leaving the head 
in the wound. A second and a third thrust could then 
be delivered. The ordinary Maori spear was from four 
to six feet long and perfectly plain, except for one or 
two bands of carving. There were also slender spears, 
sometimes as much as forty feet long, which were 
thrust between the palings of stockades, spears with 
from two to four points, and spears with barbed heads 
of wood or whalebone which would break off in the 


WEAPONS AND WARFARB lis. 


wound. The Easter Islanders used spears and javelins 
tipped with roughly chipped pieces of obsidian. 

Clubs were used everywhere (Figs. 37-46), but 
were relatively unimportant in Micronesia. In the 
Pelews the chiefs used slightly curved, wooden sabers, 
sharpened on one edge. The natives of Kusaie in the 
Carolines used long, rather slender clubs with blades 

















Fic. 37. 


Wooden War-club. 
Kusaie, Caroline Islands. Case 7. 


of diamond-shaped section, which were of the same 
width as the handle. The tip of the club was sharply 
pointed, and the butt was forked. These clubs were 
probably used for stabbing as well as striking. The 
_natives of Ruk, in the same group, used short, crudely 
made paddle clubs. The Gilbert Islanders used rather 
short, but extremely heavy, pointed clubs with small 


NDVNDDoononn 
KVRVRRKONOD in 


Fic. 38. 


Toothed Wooden Club. 
Samoa. Case 27. 
















‘i 


grips and long blades of diamond-shaped cross section. 
They also used round clubs like bats. The clubs from 
Matty and Durour, small islands lying off the north- 
east coast of New Guinea, are of especial interest. 
Their inhabitants used long, heavy wooden swords 
which are close copies of metal swords, and resemble 
the head-knives by some of the peoples of Borneo and 


ETHNOLOGY OF POLYNESIA AND MICRONESIA 


114 





























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Fic. 40. 


Wald 





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WEAPONS AND WARFARE 115 


the Philippines. They also had bat clubs and a com- 
bined club and spear, which had a long barbed point 
projecting below the grip. The natives of Lord Howe 
Island (Ontong Java) used short clubs of whalebone 
very much like some Maori forms. 

In Fiji the club was the most important weapon, 
and was made in many forms. There were a number 
of types of bat club, the simplest being nothing more 
than sections of hardwood saplings stripped of their 


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Fic. 41. 
Wooden Mushroom Club. 


Samoa. Case 27, 
bark. Sometimes the sapling was uprooted, and the 
roots trimmed off to form a knotty mace (Fig. 45). 
In another form the blade above the grip was diamond- 
shaped in section, gradually widening and thickening 
toward the tip. In still another the whole club above 
the grip was covered with low bosses. Paddle clubs 
with broad, sharp-edged blades were favorite weapons. 
There were also several curved forms some of which 
had broad, flat blades, while others (pineapple clubs) 
ended in a mass of bosses from which a single sharp 


i. 





116 





Fic, 42. 
Hooked Club. 
Fiji. Case 25. 







WEAPONS AND WARFARE 117 


spike projected downward (Fig. 44). All the curved 
types were peculiar to Fiji. The Fijians also used 
short throwing clubs with heavy round or knobbed 














Shan Ud WISSUA 2A Owl 
| ANZA LAD ie 


LL 


. 





Fic. 43. 
Lotus Club. 


Fiji. Case 25. 
heads and quite thin handles (Fig. 46). Each warrior 
usually carried two of these, hurling them before he 
came to grips with the enemy. Nearly all the better 
Fijian clubs were carved; their handles were often 
decorated with elaborate wrappings of dyed sennit. 














Fic. 44. 


Old Pineapple Club, with Carved Handle. 
Fiji. Case 25. 
Clubs were the favorite Tongan and Samoan weap- 
ons. The Tongans seem to have preferred bat clubs 
of round or diamond-shaped section with bluntly 


118 ETHNOLOGY OF POLYNESIA AND MICRONESIA 


pointed ends. Their weapons of this type are beauti- 
fully balanced, and must have been very effective. 
Paddle clubs were also important. The Samoans also 
used the bat club and paddle club, but had certain local 
types as well. Short, heavy clubs with a very broad, 
flat head (mushroom clubs) were limited to Samoa 
(Fig. 41), as were clubs with flat blades carved into 
teeth along the edge. Some clubs were toothed on both 
sides, while others were toothed along one side and 
ended in a recurved hook, said to have been used to 
carry the heads of slain enemies (Fig. 38). Short 
throwing clubs of Fijian type were used in both Samoa 
and Tonga. In historic times blubber knives, obtained 
from white whalers, were favorite Samoan weapons. | 
The Niue Islanders used long clubs with flat sickle- 
shaped blades and straight broad-bladed clubs ending 
in a spike. The favorite clubs of the Cook Islanders 
had long, flat, diamond-shaped heads, much like those 
of the spears from this group. The edges were some- 
times notched or serrated. These clubs were some- 
times as much as eight feet long. The Society Is- 
landers used shorter clubs with heads of the same 
shape and also simple bat clubs. The Marquesans used 
very long paddle clubs and shorter clubs with broad 
heads carved into conventionalized human faces 
(Plate IX). Both these types ‘were extremely heavy 
and unwieldy. The Hawaiians used bat clubs and 
also short clubs with lobed stone heads, lashed to the 
end of a wooden handle. 

The Maori clubs were unlike those found in any 
other part of the Pacific. The favorite weapon of the 
Maori was a very short, flat-bladed club of stone, 
whalebone, or wood with sharp edges (mere). This 
was used primarily for thrusting, the warrior attempt- 


WEAPONS AND WARFARE 119 


ing to drive the end of his club into his enemy’s 
temple, under the angle of his jaw, or under his ribs. 
The most valued clubs of this type were made from 
jade and sometimes required years of labor (Fig. 49). 
Those made from wood or whalebone were often elabo- 











Fic. 45, 
Wooden Club Made from Saplings with the Root Lopped off. 


Fiji. Case 25. 
rately carved and inlaid with haliotis shell. A good 
collection of these weapons is on exhibition. A wooden 
quarter staff (taiaha) was also important. This was 
usually about five and a half feet long, with a rather 
narrow, sharp-edged blade and a carved spike or 
tongue below the grip (Fig. 50). It was used as a com- 








Fic. 46. 


Throwing Club Used as Missile. 
Fiji. Case 25. 
bined club and spear. There was a science of taiaha 
fencing with properly named points and guards. The 
tewha-tewha was a straight club pointed at the lower 
end and having a broad, flat blade projecting from 
one side of the upper end (Fig. 51). The blow was 


120 ETHNOLOGY OF POLYNESIA AND MICRONESIA 


delivered with the straight edge opposite the blade. 
Both taiaha and tewha-tewha were carried by chiefs 
as emblems of authority. Staves very much like the 
taiaha, but without the pointed tongue, were carried as 
emblems of authority in the Marquesas, Mangareva, 
and Easter Island. 

An unhafted stone adze-blade, held in the hand, 
was used as a weapon in both Hawaii and New Zea- 
land. Adzes, often elaborately carved, were used as 
weapons by the Maori and possibly in the Cook group. 
Daggers tipped with ray spines were used throughout 
Micronesia and in Fiji, Tonga, and the Society group. 
Daggers of hard wood were important weapons in 
Hawali. Daggers of wood, whalebone, or even stone 
were often used in New Zealand. Double-pointed, 
wooden daggers were important in the Australs, and 
were also used in the Gilberts and Marquesas. 

Cutting weapons edged with shark-teeth were im- 
portant in the Gilbert and Society groups, but were 
little used elsewhere. The Gilbert Islanders had many 
types of spears, swords, and daggers (Figs. 47-48). 
The body of these weapons was made of coconut wood, 
the shark-teeth being drilled through the base and 
attached in rows by lashings of fine cinnet or human 
hair cord. They were often forked, or were provided 
with long curved guards, also edged with teeth. The 
Society Islanders had a weapon made with four or 
five long prongs edged with teeth and also a long- 
handled club with a flat, sickle-shaped blade with teeth 
along the inner edge. Ellis says that these were the 
most terrible of all the native weapons and would dis- 
embowel a man at a single stroke. 

Most of the Polynesians and Micronesians had no 
defensive armament. Shields were unknown. The 


WEAPONS AND WARFARE 


uf 



































Fic. 47. 
Dagger Used in Hand-to-hand Fighting. 
Gilbert Islands. Case 3. 


121 


122 ETHNOLOGY OF POLYNESIA AND MICRONESIA 


Hawaiians had helmets of wickerwork covered with 
feathers, but although these were strong enough to 
turn a blow, they were worn for decoration rather 
than defence. The Maori sometimes wore heavy, close- 
ly twined robes strong enough to stop a spear thrust. 
The use of true armor seems to have been practically 
limited to the regions in which shark-tooth weapons 
were important, and it seems probable that it was 
developed as an answer to them. The armor of the © 
Gilbert Islanders, shown in Case 2, was quite elaborate 
(Plate XII). It consisted of a flexible under suit, made 
in either one or two pieces which covered everything 
but the head, hands, and feet. This was knotted from 
heavy cinnet. Over this was worn a stiff cuirass with 
a high collar to protect the back of the head. It was 
made from thick rolls of coconut fibre sewn together 
with cord, much as in coiled basketry. Helmets were 
made from fibre, like the cuirass, or from the dried 
skins of blow fish. A broad belt of fibre or ray skin 
was often worn around the waist, over all. The com- 
plete suit weighed from fifteen to twenty pounds and 
made the wearer so unwieldy that each armored man 
was attended in battle by an unarmored squire, who 
passed him weapons and otherwise aided him. 

Ellis says of the Society Islanders, “Some of the 
fighting men wore a kind of armor of net-work, formed 
by small cords, wound round the body and limbs, so 
tight as merely to allow of the unencumbered exercise 
of the legs and arms, and not to impede the circulation 
of the blood: or the Ruuruu, a kind of wooden armor 
for the breast, back, and sides, covered with succes- 
sive folds of thick cloth bound on with ropes. . . . The 
head was guarded with a corresponding quantity of 
cloth; and thus defended, the warrior, secure against 


WEAPONS AND WARFARE 123 





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Curved Sword Set with Shark Teeth. Gilbert Islands. Case 3. 


124 ETHNOLOGY OF POLYNESIA AND MICRONESIA 


either club or spear, was generally stationed with the 
main body of the army, though so encumbered as to 
render retreat impracticable, and, in the event of the 
defeat of his companions, was invariably captured or 
slain.” 





Fic. 49. 


Jade Club (Mere) of Maori Chief. 
New Zealand. Case 38. 


The Micronesians rarely made use of fortifica- 
tions, although stockaded towns are reported from the 
southern part of the Gilbert group. The Fijians regu- 
larly fortified their villages with moats and stone- 
faced earth ramparts surmounted by reed fences or 
stockades. All the Polynesians probably made some 
use of fortifications, but they seem to have been rela- - 





Fic. 50. 


Stabbing Club of Whalebone. 
Maori, New Zealand. Case 38. 


tively unimportant in Hawaii, the Society and Cook 
groups. The Maoris were the only Polynesians who 
regularly fortified their villages. They employed 
ditches and stockades with platforms and, in later 
times, even towers several stories high. There were 


WEAPONS AND WARFARE 125 


often several lines of defences, one within the other. 
Attackers carried on regular siege operations, encirc- 
ling the town with a stockade to cut off relief, building 
towers to match those of the fort, and advancing to 
the attack behind large sapping shields pushed by 
twenty men. In time of war the Tongans also forti- 
fied their towns with stockades which had projecting 
platforms screened and loop-holed for archers. The 
Marquesans had stockaded forts with platforms, while 
the Samoans used simple stockades. Both made a con- 
siderable use of stone forts and breastworks. 

The Micronesians, except the Gilbert Islanders, 
do not seem to have been especially warlike. In the 





Carved Wooden Club. 
Maori, New Zealand. 


Pelews, Carolines, and Marshalls combats from canoes, 
without great loss of life, seem to have been the rule. 
The Fijians were split up into a great number of small 
tribes who were constantly at war, but their warfare 
was one of skirmishes and raids without much blood- 
shed. Villages were often besieged, but rarely as- 
saulted. In Samoa and Tonga warfare was usually 
connected with dynastic struggles. There were long 
periods of peace. At such times the Tongans often 
went to Fiji and served as mercenaries under native 
chiefs. Throughout the rest of Polynesia complete 
peace seems to have been exceptional. In the Mar- 
-quesas and New Zealand some of the tribes were 


126 ETHNOLOGY OF POLYNESIA AND MICRONESIA 


always at war, while in Hawaii and the Society group 
the tribes on one island, when at peace among them- 
selves, would usually attack those of some other island. 
Any slight or injury, no matter how small, might be 
made an excuse for war. If the tribes engaged were 
related to each other, peace was usually arranged be- 
fore there had been heavy losses on either side; but, if 
they were of different stocks, the war was carried on 
until one side had been enslaved or exterminated. 
Warfare was everywhere surrounded with elabo- 
rate religious observances. Among the Maoris the 
warriors were purified and dedicated to Tu, god of 
war, before they set out; and a special sacrifice was 
made to the gods. Each veteran recited an incantation, 
which was a family secret, over his weapons to render 
them invincible. One or more priests accompanied the 
war party and watched for omens. There were a great 
number of these; and, if the party encountered a 
series of unfavorable ones, it would probably turn 
back. Any man who crossed the path of a war party, 
whether friend or foe, was killed at once. If he was 
spared, misfortune was sure to follow. Before a strong 
fort was assaulted, a close relative of the chief was 
often sacrificed. While the war party was away, the 
people in the village were tabu and could eat no food. 
In the Society group a declaration of war was 
always preceded by a human sacrifice to the god Oro. 
Many other sacrifices, varying in number with the im- 
portance of the operations, were made before the party 
set out. While the warriors were assembling and mak- 
ing their preparations, the priests prayed for some 
days, and were three times rewarded by the chiefs 
with rich gifts. A special house was built for the gods. 
This was dedicated with a human sacrifice, and had to 


WEAPONS AND WARFARE 127 


be completed in a single day during which the whole 
population lay under a strict tabu. On that day no one 
could eat, light a fire, or launch a canoe. Lastly, small 
temples were erected in the canoes, and many hogs 
were offered, their heads being placed before the idol, 
while the priests ate the flesh. Red feathers, taken 
from the idol, were carried by the party. The idols 
themselves were often taken along in the canoes. As 
all their battles were fought near shore, a fleet usually 
accompanied each army. In Hawaii a chief who 
wished to go to war mace many sacrifices and often 
restored old temples. When the armies were drawn up 
in battle array, a soothsayer was called on to say 
whether the omens were propitious. Two fires, one for 
each side, were built in the space between the armies, 
and a pig offered to the gods on each. Battle was not 
joined until the offering had been completed. 

Although all the Polynesians were courageous in 
attack, they were less steady than white troops, and 
would usually break at the first serious reverse. Some 
battles were bitterly contested, however, and the 
Tongans, Hawaiians, and Maoris seem to have been 
able to stand a good deal of punishment. The Maoris 
were especially brave and, although cruel, were not 
lacking in chivalry. They would often send a warning 
to a besieged town the night before an assault. There 
are many instances of personal magnanimity to ene- 
mies taken at a disadvantage. Captured enemies were 
killed or enslaved, and even when enslaved were liable 
to be put to death at any time. 

In Micronesia the taking of heads seems to have 
been limited to the Pelews. Wilson says that the head 
of a slain chief was exhibited outsice the victor’s 
house and that there was a row of enemy skulls above 


128 ETHNOLOGY OF POLYNESIA AND MICRONESIA 


the door of one council-house. In the Gilberts enemy 
skulls were sometimes used as drinking cups. In Sa- 
moa and possibly in Tonga the heads of enemies were 
carried to the chief, who praised the warriors, but they 
do not seem to be preserved. Both the Marquesans and 
Maoris kept the heads of enemies as trophies. The 
former cleaned the skulls and decorated them with 
boars’ tusks and inset eyes of pear]-shell, while the 
latter smoked the heads of important chiefs and ex- 
posed them on their palisades or on poles by the way- 
side. 


CANNIBALISM 


Cannibalism was everywhere intimately connected 
with war. As a rule it was only slain enemies who 
were eaten, although all the groups in which the prac- 
tice prevailed, and even those in which it was unknown 
in historic times, had legends of depraved individuals 
who developed a taste for human flesh and devoured 
their own people. Habitual cannibalism was lacking in 
Micronesia, although the Gilbert Islanders sometimes 
ate some of their enemies’ flesh. In Fiji cannibalism 
was commoner than in any other part of the Pacific. 
The victims were usually enemies, but the bodies of 
commoners who had been sacrificed were also eaten. 
Shipwrecked strangers were always eaten, being said 
to have the salt upon them. Some of the Fijians de- 
veloped a great fondness for this food. One chief, Ra 
* Undreundre, ate about nine hundred persons during 
his life. Another man, personally known to one of the 
early missionaries, killed and ate his own wife. Hu- 
man flesh was always cooked separately, and the uten- 
sils used in preparing it were tabu for other purposes. 
It was commonly eaten with large wooden forks. It 
was rarely eaten by women, although not absolutely 
tabu to them. 

Cannibalism seems to have been practised to a 
very limited extent in Samoa and Tonga in ancient 
times. In Samoa the bodies treated in this way were 
usually those of enemies notorious for their cruelty; 
the practice had almost died out by the beginning of 
the historic period. In Tonga cannibalism seems to 
have been on the increase in recent times, due to the 


129 


130 ETHNOLOGY OF POLYNESIA AND MICRONESIA 


close contact between Tonga and Fiji. The Hawaiians 
and Society Islanders felt as great a horror of can- 
nibalism as Europeans. The Marquesans, Maoris, 
Kaster Islanders, and the natives of the Cook group 
were inveterate cannibals. The Maoris considered 
the flesh of their enemies as one of the most important 
spoils of war, cutting up the bodies of the slain after 
a battle, boning them and packing the meat in bas- 
kets. In all these localities the flesh of enemy women 
and children was also eaten, but human flesh was 
generally tabu to women, and no one ate that of a 
member of his own tribe. 

Many theories have been advanced to actoine for 
the origin of cannibalism, but there is no one theory 
which seems to cover all the facts. Probably it arose 
in different ways in different places. Polynesian can- 
nibalism certainly was not due to lack of other food, 
for the women, to whom human fiesh was everywhere 
tabu, got along very well without it. Simple hunger 
cannibalism in time of famine was certainly no more 
frequent in this region than in Europe. An idea of 
revenge was present, for all the Polynesians had a feel- 
ing that food was, to some degree, unclean; and to use 
an enemy for food was to degrade him utterly. There 
are also some indications of the presence of the very 
wide-spread belief that by partaking of the flesh of a 
person or animal the eater can acquire some of the 
victim’s qualities, but while this might account for the 
eating of warriors, it would weigh against the use of 
women’s and children’s flesh. However cannibalism 
may have originated, it was no doubt stimulated and 
kept alive by the native attitude toward persons out- 
side the immediate group. Civilized man bases his 
distinction between men and animals on biological 


CANNIBALISM 131 


grounds, and considers all human beings as his rela- 
tives. The uncivilized man, on the other hand, draws 
his line at the limits of his own tribe, strangers and 
animals alike being outside the pale. To the ordinary 
Polynesian an unrelated enemy was a being of a dif- 
ferent order, and he felt that there was no more rea- 
son for not eating him than for not eating a pig. 


GAMES 


The Polynesians and Micronesians had a great 
variety of sports and pastimes, but the information 
for a great part of the region is unsatisfactory. 
Wrestling seems to have been universal, and was 
fairly scientific, with many names for grips. Hawaiian 
chiefs kept wrestlers in their retinues. In the Society 
group the sport was so popular that even women of 
royal blood sometimes entered the ring themselves. 
Boxing was important in Hawaii, the Society group, 
and Tonga, but was in less favor than wrestling. The 
boxers were usually commoners and fought with bare 
fists, relying on strength rather than skill. Foot rac- 
ing was universal. Football was played in the Society 
and Gilbert groups, the ball being a cube of Pandanus 
matting stuffed with leaves. The object of the game 
was to force the ball over the enemy’s goal line. Whole 
districts often played against each other. A rougher 
form of this game, in which the hands instead of the 
feet were used, often resulted in serious injuries. In 
the Society group the men played shinny, using curved 
sticks and a small ball of tightly wrapped tapa. 

The sport of throwing spears at a mark was uni- 
versal. In Fiji, and throughout most of Polynesia 
light darts were thrown along a level course in such 
a way that they struck the ground and glanced, the 
man whose dart traveled farthest being the winner. 
Archery as a sport was regularly practised only in 
the Society group, and possibly in Fiji and Tonga, 
where the bow was an important weapon. The Society 
group archery was accompanied by many religious ob- 


132 


GAMES 133 


servances, and was really a sacred sport. The bow was 
never used in war. The archers wore special costumes. 
These, together with the bows, arrows, and quivers, 
were kept between contests by an appointed keeper. 
The shooting ground was a long, open space with a 
low platform of stone at one end. The bows were 
straight, about five feet long. The arrows, from two 
to three feet long, were made of bamboo with un- 
barbed heads of ironwood, and had no feathers. The 
archers knelt on one knee on the platform, and shot 
for distance, the maximum range being slightly over 
three hundred yards. Before the contest began, the 
contestants went through ceremonies in the temple, 
and put on the archers’ costumes. After it was com- 
pleted, they had to return to the temple, deliver up 
their weapons, change their clothes and bathe before 
they could eat or return home. 

Stilt walking was an important sport in the Mar- 
quesas and New Zealand, and was practised to some 
extent in Hawaii and the Society group, but seems to 
have been unknown elsewhere. The stilts were shaped 
much like modern European ones, with steps made 
from separate pieces of wood and long shafts which 
were held in the hand. Marquesan stilt steps were 
usually carved into small wooden figures. The Mar- 
quesans were especially expert at running races on 
stilts and engaging in sham fights, each man trying to 
knock out his adversary’s stilts by quick blows from 
his own. 

Bowling was important in Hawaii, the natives 
using carefully made stone disks, which were rolled 
along a level course. A similar game is recorded from 
the Cook group, but seems to have been unknown else- 
where. 


134 ETHNOLOGY OF POLYNESIA AND MICRONESIA 


Coasting was a favorite sport of adults in Hawaii 
and of children in New Zealand. In both places special 
slides were constructed for the purpose. The Hawaiian 
slides were carefully made of beaten earth covered 
with long slippery grass. Their sleds had runners of 
polished wood with crosspieces and boards for the 
coaster to lie on. The Maori sleds were simple tobog- 
gans made from a single plank about three feet long 
and four inches wide with rests for the feet. 

Kite flying was important in New Zealand and 
the Cook group, and was known in the Marquesas. 
The best kites were made of tapa over a frame of light 
wood, and were flat, with long tails. Those of the 
Maoris were sometimes made in human or other gro- 
tesque forms. 

Cock fighting was a favorite sport in Hawaii and 
the Society group. In it, and in most of the athletic 
sports, large wagers were often laid. 

There were a great variety of toys and children’s 
games. Whipping tops were in general use. The Maoris 
also had humming tops, spun with a cord, which were 
used as toys and also in a peculiar mourning ceremony 
performed when friends came to condole with a de- 
feated tribe after a battle. A form of cup and pin 
game is reported from the Marquesas. The Maoris had 
wooden jumping jacks worked with cords, hoops, and 
many other toys. Juggling was universal, and so were 
the use of cat’s cradles, figures made by interweaving 
strings between the hands. 

All the natives were expert swimmers, learning 
to swim almost as soon as they learned to walk. Chil- 
dren spent a good deal of their time in the water, and 
the older people bathed at least once a day. There were 
no organized water sports, but young men and women 


GAMES 135 








often contested in swimming and fancy diving. The 
‘Polynesians were the inventors of the surf board, and 
surf riding was an important amusement in Hawaii. 
In Fiji, the Marquesas, and Society group the surf 
_ board was rarely used by adults. In western Polyne- 
gia and Micronesia it seems to have been unknown. 


F. 


j 
' 
a 
# 
je 
J- 
t 
r 
A 





ART 


Polynesian and Micronesian art is primarily deco- 
rative (Figs. 52-59, Plates II-III). It was a love of 
design and color for their own sake which led the na- 
tives to ornament their garments and utensils. Most 
of the designs were named, but it seems doubtful 
whether symbolism or a belief in associative magic 
was present in any of the secular work. Magical ideas 
may have been present in the case of images and other 
religious objects, but even in these aesthetic consider- 
ations were never lost sight of; for instance, the cere- 
monial paddles from Mangaia (shown in Case 32) are 
carved with many repetitions of a conventionalized 
human figure representing a god. The use of these 
figures was probably believed to increase the mana 
(indwelling power) of the adze, but the artist treated 
them purely as designs, arranging them and modifying 
them to suit his fancy. 

Micronesian art is comparatively poor. The only 
people to make any extensive use of decoration were 
the Pelew Islanders, who ornamented their town 
houses and other sacred structures with carved human 
figures and with painted friezes depicting men and 
animals of all sorts. Although the painted figures were 
conventionalized, they were bold and possessed con- 
siderable artistic merit. A few plant forms and a 
number of simple angular designs were also used. 
Utensils and weapons were sometimes decorated with 
mother-of-pearl] inlay. 

The Caroline Islanders carved a few of their im- 
plements with angular designs, and used simple pat- 


136 


137 





Fic. 52, 
Pattern on Maori Rafter. (After A. Hamilton) 


138 ETHNOLOGY OF POLYNESIA AND MICRONESIA 


terns, usually stripes, in their textiles. In the Mar- 
shalls decoration was practically limited to the bor- 
ders of the women’s mat skirts, which were embroid- 
ered with angular designs. In the Gilberts baskets 
were decorated with angular designs, and armor was 
sometimes ornamented with diamond-shaped figures 
or conventionalized outlines of fish. Except for occa- 


NA 








WN 





? < © xX 
TR 


BRASS 
DMF SA 


Fic. 53. 
Tapa Designs, Hawaii. 
(After Greiner) 
sional images, used as cult objects, wood carving seems 
to have been unknown in the Marshalls and Gilberts. 
Throughout the whole region, ornamental lashings, 
made by interlacing strings of cinnet dyed in different 
colors, were important as house decoration, and were 
used to a lesser extent on tools and weapons. 


ART 139 


The art of Fiji is much like that of the neighbor- 
ing Polynesian groups, but is characterized by greater 
boldness and force. The principal media were carving 
and painting on tapa. The designs were nearly all an- 
gular and geometric, although a few naturalistic out- 
line figures of men and animals were used in carvings 
on clubs and some more or less conventionalized plant 
forms in tapa painting. Much of the tapa painting 
shows a bold and effective use of black on white. Pot- 





Fic. 54. 


Design on Canoe Paddle, Marquesas. 
(After Greiner) 


tery was sometimes modeled in the form of fruit or 
vegetables. The priests’ oil-dishes were made in fan- 
tastic shapes, some of them representing animals or 
birds. Mats were woven in simple patterns, and cin- 
net lashings were important. 

The art of Polynesia is unusually rich, the princi- 
pal media being wood carving, painting on tapa, and 
tattooing. Carving was universal, but was least de- 
veloped in Hawaii, where it was rarely applied to or- 
dinary implements and utensils. Inlaying, as an 


140 ETHNOLOGY OF POLYNESIA AND MICRONESIA 


adjunct of carving, was practised in Tonga, Manahiki, 
Hawaii, and New Zealand. In the last two localities it 
was practically limited to inserting shell eyes in carved 
faces. In Samoa an effect somewhat like inlay was ob- 
tained by filling carvings with hard lime-plaster and 
rubbing the whole surface smooth. Tapa painting was 


D GO] = 





Fic. 55. 
Design on a Bowl, Marquesas. 
(After Greiner) 


important in Tonga, Samoa, the Cook, Austral and 
Society groups, as well as in Hawaii (Fig. 53 and 
Plates V-VII), but was lacking in the Marquesas. 
Painting on wood was limited to New Zealand 
CFig?52): 


Tattooing was universal, but was finest in New 
Zealand and the Marquesas. 


Ornamental cinnet 


ART 141 


lashings were important in Tonga, Samoa, the Cook, 
Austral and Society groups, and the Marquesas, but 
were almost unknown in Hawaii and New Zealand. 
The Tongans, Samoans, Hawaiians, and Maoris deco- 
rated their mats with simple patterns. The Maoris used 
rather elaborate designs on their belts and the borders 
of their robes. Decorated baskets seem to have been 
limited to Tonga, Samoa, and New Zealand. Feather 
robes with simple figures were important in Hawaii 
and New Zealand (Plate XIV). 





Fic. 56. 


Samoan Design on a War Club. 
(After Greiner) 


It is impossible to give anything like a complete 
account of Polynesian art in this guidebook. The art 
of each group had certain distinctive features, and 
even in the same locality different sorts of designs 
would often be used on different classes of objects. In 
general, the art of Tonga, Samoa, the Cook, Austral 
and Society groups, and Hawaii was characterized by 
the use of small, angular designs which were repeated 
many times. The only curved designs were circles, 
ovals, and crescents, the spiral being practically un- 
known. There was a limited use of conventionalized 


142 ETHNOLOGY OF POLYNESIA AND MICRONESIA 


plant forms in all these localities, while small natural- 
istic outline figures of men and animals were employed 
everywhere, except in Hawaii. In the Marquesas the 
designs were predominantly curvi-linear, the spiral 
being of first importance. Large angular designs were 
carved on house timbers, perhaps as an imitation of 





Fic. 57. 


Design on a War Club, Samoa. 
(After Greiner) 
ornamental lashings, but were rarely used elsewhere. 
Highly conventionalized human faces were constantly 
used, but human figures in outline were extremely 
rare; animal forms were so conventionalized as to be 
unrecognizable, and plant forms were almost lacking. 
There were two quite distinct types of art in New 
Zealand. The natives of the south island used simple 


ART 143 


angular designs in their carvings. All the Maoris em- 
ployed angular designs on their baskets, textiles, and 
feather robes. The natives of the north island employed 
only curvi-linear designs in their carving and painting. 
The most important single element was the spiral, 
but highly conventionalized human figures, faces, and 
animal forms were much used in carving. Many of the 
scroll designs painted on rafters were said to be de- 
rived from plant forms, but were so highly conven- 
tionalized as to be unrecognizable. In Tonga, Samoa, 
the Cook group, and the Marquesas the surface to be 


Suan 
SOO 


S ‘ 
Ps 
ROR 





OX 
GID, 
SOROS | 


Fic. 58. 


Tonga Design for Tapa. 
(After Greiner) 


decorated was divided into a number of sections which 
were treated as independent units. In Hawaii, New 
Zealand, and probably in the Society group, the whole 
surface was treated as a unit. The art of the Marque- 
sans and northern Maoris was bold and forceful, and 
found its closest parallel in that of certain parts of 
Melanesia, notably the Massim region of New Guinea. 
That of the other large Polynesian groups was deli- 
cate, with a great attention to detail, but showed 
little ability in large composition. It found its closest 
parallel in the rather feeble art of eastern Micronesia. 


144 ETHNOLOGY OF POLYNESIA AND MICRONESIA 


All the natives seem to have made some use of 
human figures carved in the round, which were set up 
in sacred places as representations of gods or ances- 
tors. Such images were least important in Micronesia, 
Fiji, Tonga, and Samoa. The few examples preserved 
from these localities show a crude attempt at natural-. 
ism. In Hawaii, the Marquesas, and the Cook, Austral, 
and Society .groups great numbers of images were 
made. The Maoris had a few images in the round, but 


a 
= 


Th wT 


a 
. A 


ayers 


= 3 


2 
Me 
et 
‘ 


Ta on : 
- er 

= 

nd 





Fic. 59. 


Design from Ceremonial Paddle. 
Mangaia, Cook Group. Case 32. 


most of their human figures were carved in high relief 
on slabs (Plate III). The Austral and Society Island 
figures were rather crude. The legs were usually: 
flexed, and the arms bent with the hands resting on 
the abdomen or raised to the chin. The facial treat- 
ment was simple, and in some instances the features 
were omitted. In one example from the Australs eyes, 
nose, and mouth are indicated by small human figures 
carved in relief. ne 


ART 145 


In Hawaii, the Marquesas, the Cook group, and 
New Zealand most of the images were rigidly conven- 
tionalized, although both the Hawaiians and the Maoris 
carved some rather good naturalistic figures and even 
attempted portraiture. Although each group had its 
own conventions, all of them had certain features in 
common. The legs were shown half flexed and, except 
in Hawaii, the arms were always bent, both hands 
resting on the abdomen, or one hand being in this po- 
sition, and the other raised to the mouth. The great- 
est care was expended on the face. The brows were 
greatly exaggerated, the nose reduced, and the mouth 
made extremely wide, with parted lips showing the 
tongue. In Hawaii and New Zealand the mouth was 
often beaked, assuming the form of an eight. Al- 
though the images were usually made of wood, stone 
was sometimes employed in Hawaii, the Marquesas, 
Society and Austral groups, and Easter Island, but 
rarely in the Cook group and New Zealand. In every 
case the convention of the stone figures agrees with 
that of the local wooden forms. 


MANA AND TAPU 


The concepts of mana and tapu underlie the 
whole fabric of Polynesian religion and social organi- 
zation. The word mana has no exact English equiva- 
lent. Perhaps it can be most nearly translated by 
“power,” if that term is used with all its manifold 
implications. It was an essence or force which per- 
vaded the whole of nature, but was uneven in its dis- 
tribution. Some persons or objects had a great deal 
of it, others almost none. Its presence might be dis- 
covered accidentally, as when it was found that the 
use of a certain stone as a sinker was followed by an 
unusual catch of fish. It could be strengthened by 
spells, such as those recited by a warrior over his 
weapons, or by use. A club that had killed many men, 
or a chisel that had been used by a master carver, had 
more mana than an unused weapon or club. Tregear 
says, “In human beings mana had really a religious 
basis, it was born with great chiefs as part of their 
god-inheritance, but it could be lost. It could also be 
greatly strengthened: it was not exactly success in 
battle, or acquisition of power and lands, or repute 
for wisdom, but the possession of these was a sign of 
the indwelling of mana. Its outward form might be 
what we vaguely call good luck, genius, reputation, 
etc., but it might also be recognized in high courage, 
lofty social position, and personal influence. Mana 
was shown when a man undertook to do an unusual 
and almost impossible thing and yet succeeded. It was 
not always necessary to be of noble birth to possess 
mana; the child of a slave could by great daring, in- 


146 


MANA AND TAPU 147 


fluence, and good fortune rise to be a noted chief or 
dreaded councilor. Lands and localities were supposed 
to possess mana of their own, as well as men, weap- 
ons, etc. This influence when it pertained to land 
was on account of the spirits of famous men remain- 
ing on guard over them.” 

Tapu has been taken over into English as tabu. 
Tregear writes, “Its proper sense seems to be neither 
‘sacred’ nor ‘defiled,’ although it may take either 
meaning, and that medial expression ‘prohibited’ per- 
haps translates it best—‘prohibited’ for sacred rea- 
sons, ‘prohibited’ for objectionable reasons. The true 
inwardness of the word tapu is that it infers the set- 
ting apart of certain persons or things on account of 
their having become possessed or infected by the pres- 
ence of supernatural beings. Great chiefs were by na- 
ture tapu on account of their divine birth. If such 
chiefs performed certain actions, such as entering a 
common house, leaning against a post, eating a por- 
tion of food, etc., the house, the post, or the remain- 
ing scraps of victuals were tapu to others. If a com- 
mon man partook of scraps left by his noble master, he 
was then ‘eating the god’ of his own tribe, and thus 
not only committing a terrible sacrilege against his 
protecting deity, but probably bringing down upon his 
- jJeader the wrath of heavenly beings whose essential 
sacredness had been conveyed to the food by the touch 
of the chief. That is the reason why the chief himself 
would feel violent personal anger at his tapu being 
broken by the act of an inferior. If a chief made a 
thing tapu, such prohibition was only held binding on 
lesser men; if some more powerful noble came, he 
would take it, disregarding the tapu of the other, very 
much as if he had said, ‘This fellow’s position in 


148 ETHNOLOGY OF POLYNESIA AND MICRONESIA 


regard to the gods is nothing compared to mine,’ but, 
of course, he might have to maintain such superiority 
at the point of the spear. 

“The priests, especially the priest-chiefs (Ariki), 
had the power of releasing from tapu and making 
things common (noa) again; if this could not have 
been done, the laws of tapu would have been too heavy 
to be borne, and all social life must have ceased. As it 
was, it was almost impossible not to infringe this 
dreaded custom, even if scrupulous and pious care was 
taken. The annoyance was almost as great for the 
sacred person as for the sinner, although not so un- 
pleasant or perhaps fatal in its consequences. Thus, 
the chief must eat in the open air, whatever the 
weather, so as not to tapu a house; must not eat from 
a plate that another shared or that another might af- 
terward use; must gather up all scraps and take them 
away to a tapu spot lest another consume them. He 
could not drink from a vessel if it was probable that 
the lips of another would approach that vessel, so 
that he had to hold his hand curved upward below 
his lower lip, whilst water was poured from a cala- 
bash into his mouth. A chief had to be careful not to 
leave his comb or hair-fillet or shoulder-mat in any 
place where a common person would touch them. 
Even if another person equally sacred touched his 
head, he would be tapu until the next day when the 
purifying ceremony would proceed. A new sacred fire 
was kindled by friction and fern-root cooked thereon 
by some ‘unprohibited’ person. The food was then 
rubbed over the disqualified hands, and afterwards 
eaten by the female head of the family. If the shadow 
of a great Ariki fell across a food-store, the contents 
became tapu and had to be destroyed. If he blew on 


MANA AND TAPU 149 


a fire with his breath the fire became tapu. Should a 
priest in drinking let fall some of the water from his 
hand, that place was tapu, and the length of time it 
so remained depended on the quantity of water spilt. 
On one occasion the people of a village became tapu 
from eating the wild cabbage which had grown on the 
site once occupied by a chief’s house. The infringe- 
ment of the tapu was not only a spiritual offence, but 
sometimes produced actual physical consequences. 
Death would almost certainly ensue if a common man 
found, for instance, that he had cooked his food with 
timber from some tapu place.” 


The account of tapu just quoted refers specifically 
to the Maori of New Zealand, but similar ideas and 
practices were present everywhere in Polynesia. The 
regulations of the tapu were extremely irksome to all 
concerned, and a good chief was expected to regulate 
his actions so as to cause as little damage as possible 
to his followers. In some places certain paths were set 
aside for the chief to traverse, and it was understood 
that his feet only tapued the ground to a fixed dis- 
tance. In others the chief went out only at night, to 
avoid contaminating objects with his shadow. In still 
others there was a class of persons, usually foreigners, 
who were considered non-conductors, and could asso- 
ciate with both chiefs and commoners without impart- 
ing the tapu. These waited on the chief, cooked his 
food, and even carried him from place to place. In 
some of the groups the stringency of the tapu seems 
to have been one of the main factors responsible for 
the establishment of a dual chieftainship, one chief 
being sacred and observing the tapus, while another 
actually ruled. 


150 ETHNOLOGY OF POLYNESIA AND MICRONESIA 


In historic times involuntary tapus were only one 
phase of the institution. There were everywhere a 
long series of tapus which derived their sanction from 
some ancient chief or god, and which took the place 
of laws in regulating the conduct of individuals. Tem- 
porary tapus, imposed and lifted at will, were used 
for the protection of property or the conservation of 
resources; for instance, when a Samoan village wished 
to buy a large canoe, a tapu would be placed on coco- 
nuts or other native products for a time, so that each 
family would have enough to pay its quota. Standing 
crops were often tapued as a protection from theft, 
although this only guarded them from persons of lower 
rank than the tapuer. A sign was usually hung up as 
a warning. In Samoa these signs were of many differ- 
ent sorts, and indicated the spirit in whose name the 
tapu was imposed and the penalty which would fol- 
low its infraction. Thus, when a man hung up a small 
coconut-leaf figure of a shark in his breadfruit tree, 
it indicated that the tree was under the protection of 
the shark god and that the thief would be eaten by 
sharks. There were no limits to the tapu power of 
chiefs of the highest rank. They might reserve all 
food of a certain sort to themselves or lay an embargo 
on an island, so that no one could enter or leave. The 
system of imposed tapu was most developed in Hawaii, 
and finally became so irksome that the natives, en- 
couraged by the fact that white men were immune, 
rose and destroyed the whole institution. 

In Fiji the concepts of mana and tapu, and the 
use of the latter, were much the same as in western 
Polynesia. In Micronesia the mana idea was relatively 
weak, and seems to have taken the form common in 
Melanesia, where the mana of a person or object was 


MANA AND TAPU 151 


believed to be due to its association with a spirit. The 
idea of infectious tapu by involuntary contact was 
weak or lacking, but there were conduct tapus inher- 
ited from ancient times and temporary tapus. The lat- 
ter seem to have been most important in the Carolines, 
and were imposed by priests rather than chiefs. 


SOCIAL ORGANIZATION 


The ordinary Polynesian family was monogamous 
for economic reasons. There was no feeling against 
polygamy, but it was usually limited to chiefs, and 
even these rarely had more than three wives at a time. 
Polyandry (plurality of husbands) was very rare, ex- 
cept in the Marquesas, where it was normal. Even 
there, there was always a main or official husband, 
the other husbands exercising their rights only when 
he was away. In polygamous families there was a 
principal wife, the one of highest birth. In Samoa a 
chief’s daughter was accompanied, when she went to 
her husband, by a younger sister who stayed with them 
for a time and acted as an inferior wife. In Hawaii 
the highest ranks practised brother and sister mar- 
riage to insure the purity of the royal blood. A simi- 
lar practice seems to have existed in the Cook group. 
Elsewhere the marriage of close relatives was pro- 
hibited, although that between cousins was often fa- 
vored as a means of keeping property in the family. 
Although children were sometimes betrothed in in- 
fancy, marriage was relatively late, men rarely mat- 
ing before they reached the age of twenty. Young 
people of the lower classes enjoyed complete freedom 
before marriage, and rarely settled down until they 
had had several love affairs. 

The children of chiefs and nobles were more care- 
fully chaperoned. In both Tonga and Samoa the vir- 
ginity of the bride was tested as a part of the mar- 
riage ceremony. Commoners’ marriages were based 
on personal choice, but those of chiefs were nearly 


152 


SOCIAL ORGANIZATION 153 


always arranged by the councilors. They: were a favor- 
ite method of cementing alliances between tribes. 
Marriage by purchase seems to have been unknown. 
In chiefs’ unions the two families exchanged gifts, but 
those of the bride’s family, which constituted her 
dowry, were usually the larger. The marriage bond 
was easily severed, unions being dissolved at the wish 
of either party. In such cases young children would re- 
main with the mother, while the older ones stayed 
with either parent they wished. Infanticide was espe- 
cially common in the Society group, but was practised 
everywhere. Large families were exceptional. Adop- 
tion was common, being most important in the Mar- 
quesas, where practically all children were adopted, 
and where they were often spoken for before they 
were born. Adopted children everywhere had exactly 
the same position as natural ones. 

Gentes or clans, that is, groups membership in 
which was based on cescent reckoned exclusively in 
the male or female line, seem to have been unknown in 
Polynesia. The foundations of the social organization 
were the family and tribe. The latter was really an 
enlarged family, for all its free members were at least 
remotely related by blood or adoption. In Tonga it is 
said that if the entire population was removed one by 
one, the last male survivor would have a ‘legitimate 
claim to the title of Tuitonga (sacred chief of Tonga). 
Several families lived together in a village, and when 
the tribal territory was large, it was usually divided 
into districts each of which included several villages. 
The villages and districts were governmental units, 
having their own chiefs and councils and, at least in 
Samoa, their own patron deities, but membership in a 
village or district was not necessarily a matter of 


154 ETHNOLOGY OF POLYNESIA AND MICRONESIA 


descent. Political groupings larger than the tribe 
sometimes arose through conquest or through the fus- 
ing of two royal lines by marriage, but they always 
tended to fall apart. Temporary alliances between 
tribes were common, but there were no confederacies. 

All the Polynesians were obsessed with the idea 
of rank. This was based exclusively on descent and 
primogeniture, which overshadowed all other consider- 
ations, even sex. The rank of a given individual was 
dependent upon that of both parents, plus seniority 
of birth. In tracing descent a person would give the 
ancestor of highest rank in each generation, so that 
nearly all genealogies contain both male and female 
names. The system was not unlike that used by mod- 
ern European families when trying to prove a royal ~ 
ancestry. In general, descent through the eldest son 
was considered the most direct, but the eldest child of 
either sex by the highest wife enjoyed the highest 
rank in that particular family. Even the sacred chief 
of Tonga had to accord certain marks of respect to his 
elder sister. In New Zealand, which seems to have 
been most nearly patrilineal, the eldest son of a chief 
by a low-cast wife could not inherit his father’s social 
status or office. It is said that in the Society group a 
low-cast wife or husband could be elevated by certain 
ceremonies at the marae (“temple”) and also by kill- 
ing the first children of the union, the rank of the 
lower partner increasing as each child was killed un- 
til equality was reached. 

The children of a royal woman and a commoner 
were of higher rank than those of a royal man and 
common woman, and, in general there was a tendency 
toward the matrilineal descent of rank in all those 
groups in which chastity was not very highly valued, 


SOCIAL ORGANIZATION 155 


and paternity was rather uncertain. The whole sys- 
tem of rank had a religious sanction, being based on 
ancestor worship. The person who was very closely 
related to the tribal ancestors could be surest of their 
help and support. In some groups the chief was con- 
sidered an embodiment of these ancestors, and was 
accorded divine honors. Each succeeding chief inher- 
ited the mana of all his ancestors, so that an eldest 
son was of higher rank than his own father. 

In a system which laid so much stress on descent, 
genealogies were of the utmost importance. Some of 
those from the Marquesas purport to give over eighty 
generations, but the earlier portions are clearly mythi- 
cal. Actual genealogies recording from twenty to 
thirty generations were quite common. Every well- 
born native knew his genealogy by heart, for he might 
have to appeal to it at any time to establish his right 
to land or to some office. In the Society group the 
descendant of a chief who had left an island several 
generations before could return to that island and 
take up his ancestor’s lands and titles if he could prove 
his claim by reciting his genealogy correctly. For this 
reason the Society Island genealogies were kept as 
family secrets. Claimants were examined at their an- 
cestral marae, and there was a special class of priests 
whose business it was to memorize genealogies and 
tribal records and to check up on such claims. In the 
Marquesas and Hawaii there were also priests who 
were supposed to know all the genealogies of the tribe, 
and in Hawaii they were organized into a sort of col- 
lege of heralds who passed on the claims of aspirants 
to chiefly rank or office. There can be little doubt, how- 
ever, that they sometimes discovered lofty genealogies 
for chiefs who had acquired temporal power. 


156 ETHNOLOGY OF POLYNESIA AND MICRONESIA 


Social rank was purely a matter of birth and was 
inalienable. It was a prerequisite for office, but its 
possession did not mean temporal power. When the 
social head of the tribe was a woman, the actual chief 
would usually be a man, although, if there were no 
male claimants of very high rank, or if she had ability 
and force of character, she might rule. In New Zea- 
land, the Society group, the Marquesas, and Hawaii 
the social head of the tribe, if a man, exercised both 
religious and temporal powers; he was, in short, a 
priest-king. This condition probably existed every- 
where in Polynesia in ancient times, but by the begin- 
ning of the historic period the Samoans, Tongans, and 
Cook Islanders had both sacred and secular chiefs. 
The sacred chief was the social head of the tribe, but 
was so hedged about by tapus that he rarely took any 
part in the government and had little real power. The 
secular chief was often a relative of the sacred chief, 
perhaps a younger brother, but the office might pass 
into the hands of another line. Although the chieftain- 
ship was everywhere hereditary in theory, the tribal 
councils seem to have often set aside the direct heir in 
favor of some more able member of the family, and 
chiefs were sometimes deposed for misconduct. 

In general priests stood next to the chiefs in the 
social order, but their rank varied with their individ- 
ual status. The higher orders of ceremonial priests 
were nearly always recruited from chiefly families, 
and the high priest of an important god was little in- 
ferior in rank to a sacred chief. Below the head chiefs 
and high priests ranked the lesser chiefs and priests, 
and below these, in turn, the commoners. There was 
a good deal of intermarriage between the lower chiefs 
and the commoners. There were many individuals 


SOCIAL ORGANIZATION 157 


whose social status was on the border line. The dis- 
tinction between chiefs and commoners was strongest 
in Hawaii, where most of the latter were tenants on 
the chiefs’ land. Elsewhere there was a socially and 
economically important middle class made up of land 
owners and skilled craftsmen. The latter were or- 
ganized into more or less hereditary guilds, and de- 
manded high pay for their services. They were, in a 
sense, priests, for they had to have a knowledge of the 
spells and ritual necessary to make their work success- 
ful. In some places the payments made them were con- 
sidered offerings to the patron deity of their particular 
trade. Labor was considered honorable, and minor 
chiefs were often skilled artisans as well. At the bot- 
tom of the social scale there was usually a class of 
slaves or serfs, descendants of prisoners of war. 
Polynesian government was comparatively simple. 
Each chief was, in theory, the absolute ruler of his 
group. His orders were expressed as tapus, and had a 
divine sanction, so that disobedience automatically 
brought punishment. In practice, however, the chief 
was restrained by his council and by a strong public 
opinion. The village councils were made up of the 
heads of families and other important men with the 
village chief presiding. They were really little more 
than town meetings at which local affairs were dis- 
cussed informally. District councils were made up of 
the village chiefs and other important men, while 
tribal councils were composed of all the chiefs. Tribal 
councils were only convened to discuss matters of im- 
portance to the whole tribe, such as declarations of 
war or the selection of a new head chief. They were 
usually attended with a good deal of formality, but 
discussion was free, and few chiefs would dare to go 


158 ETHNOLOGY OF POLYNESIA AND MICRONESIA 


against the public will expressed there. The chiefs 
were most despotic in Tonga and Hawaii and least so 
in the Marquesas. In the latter group the organization 
was quite democratic and, although the chief was ac- 
corded respect in both temporal and religious matters, 
his actual power depended upon his ability. In Hawaii 
there seems to have been a distinct class of personal 
councilors to the chief, commoners, who were able 
generals or diplomats, and a chief’s personal at- 
tendants everywhere did a good deal to influence his 
decisions. 

Theft and crimes of violence were not uncommon. 
When they occurred within the group, the case was 
tried, and punishment prescribed by the chief and 
council. There was no police to enforce the penalties, 
but a man who fled to escape it would forfeit his prop- 
erty. Death sentences were usually executed by a rela- 
tive or retainer of the chief, to prevent the victim’s 
relatives from taking revenge on the executioner. Pri- 
vate revenge was common, and in general the whole 
family or tribe was held responsible for the conduct 
of each of its members. As a tribe would rarely give 
up one of its members for an offence against an out- 
sider, many wars began in this way. In New Zealand 
certain classes of offences were punished by plunder- 
ing, the friends of the injured party carrying off the 
property of the offender’s relatives and even destroy- 
ing their houses and standing crops. This plundering 
was a recognized institution, and the victims were 
forbidden to defend their property. 

Personal property was individually owned. A 
woman retained her rights after marriage. Land was 
considered the property of the whole tribe. Its own- 
ership was vested in the chief as the official head of the 


SOCIAL ORGANIZATION 159 


group, and the lesser chiefs and middle class held 
their land from him. At the same time any family 
who had held and used land for several generations 
was felt to have a strong right to it. The chief could 
not sequester it without good cause. As a rule even 
the chiefs could not sell land to any outsider without 
the consent of the council, and in practice such trans- 
fers were extremely rare. The chiefs’ power over land 
seems to have been greatest in Hawaii, where the bulk 
of the population consisted of rent-paying tenants, 
and even lesser chiefs had their land allotted them by 
the high chiefs. 

Micronesian social organization is still imper- 
fectly known. In the Gilbert group descent was reck- 
oned in the male line. Monogamy was the rule, al- 
though a man had marital rights over the widows of 
his deceased brothers and over his wife’s sisters by 
the same mother. It was considered unworthy for a 
man to exercise these rights unless his real wife was 
childless. Incest was strictly forbidden, and great em- 
phasis was laid on chastity. When an unmarried wom- 
an was seduced, both parties would be put to death. 
Infant betrothal was common, and all marriages were 
arranged by the parents. Long genealogies were kept, 
but the idea of rank was less developed than in most 
islands of Polynesia. The powers of the chief depended 
upon his personality, and he was not considered sac- 
red. The ownership of land was vested in families. It 
was regularly transferred as a part of a bride’s dowry. 

In the Marshalls and Carolines descent was reck- 
oned in the female line, and there seems to have been 
a clan organization. In the Carolines the clans were 
totemic and exogamous. In the Marshalls the popula- 
tion was divided into four classes,—chiefs, nobles, 


160 ETHNOLOGY OF POLYNESIA AND MICRONESIA 


commoners, and slaves. The chiefs had autocratic 
power, and were considered personal owners of the 
land. In the Carolines the chiefs were sacred, and 
were treated with great formality, but they did not 
own land, and seem to have had little real power. 
Throughout the Carolines the men’s house was an in- 
stitution. This was a large house which was shared 
by all unmarried men of a clan; it was tabu to women. 
In Yap one or more women, abducted from other 
tribes, were kept in each of these houses for the use of 
the inmates. They were treated with respect, and us- 
ually married later in life. A similar house for women 
existed in some of the islands, but the distribution of 
this practice is uncertain. 

Fijian social organization was quite complex, 
largely as a result of the superposition of a number of 
Polynesian features on an older organization of Mela- 
nesian type. Polygamy was common, chiefs often hav- 
ing as many as twenty wives. Marriage between 
brother and sister or between the children of two 
brothers or two sisters was forbidden. The children — 
of a brother and of a sister, on the other hand, were 
considered the natural mates for each other, and were 
looked upon as betrothed from birth. This feeling was 
so strong that, even if the parties married persons out- 
side the family, the woman’s children were considered 
the children of her own instead of her real husband. 
This system tended to stagnate blood within the fami- 
ly, but actual statistics show that the children of such 
close unions were more numerous than those from 
marriages outside the family, and were » fully as good 
mentally and physically. 

Every Fijian tribe was divided into a number of 
sections which were subdivided in turn. The members 


SOCIAL ORGANIZATION 161 


of each section traced their descent from a group of 
brothers, while the members of each subsection traced 
theirs from one of these brothers. There was a sug- 
gestion of totemism, each group having a sacred bird 
or animal, which it did not eat, and a sacred plant. In 
some tribes the whole population was divided into two 
groups which were exogamous; that is, members of 
the same group were forbidden to intermarry. This 
dual organization was most important in the part of 
Fiji, where the Polynesian influence was strongest, al- 
though the Polynesians themselves had no such ar- 
rangement. The real political and social unit was the 
tribe, and all larger groupings were more or less 
transitory. A strong chief might conquer several 
tribes and exact tribute, but the conquered retained 
title to their land, and were not incorporated with the 
conquerors. Tribute was usually paid to the conquer- 
ing chief in person, but in some cases one village as a 
whole would hold another village vassal. The vassal 
village might be either a conquered enemy or a colony 
founded by members of the ruling village. 

The idea of rank and of social classes was most 
- strongly developed among the tribes which had been in- 
fluenced by Polynesia. The ancient Fijian social organ- 
ization seems to have been more democratic than the 
Polynesian one, but full membership in the group was 
a matter of birth or adoption. Inheritance of rank and 
property was in the female line. A man’s wives might 
be of different rank, and therefore his children, but 
rank made no difference in land ownership. There 
were no long, carefully kept genealogies of the Poly- 
nesian sort. In general the population was divided 
into chiefs, nobles, commoners, and outcasts. The first 
three groups were related by blood, while the lowest 


162 ETHNOLOGY OF POLYNESIA AND MICRONESIA 


class consisted of the descendants of outsiders, either 
castaways or prisoners of war. Although there was 
some intermarriage between commoners and outcasts, 
the children of such marriages remained members of 
the lowest class. 

In ancient times a single chief seems to have held 
both the secular and sacred power. In historic times 
various tribes showed all stages in the development of 
a dual chieftainship like that of western Polynesia. 
The person of the sacred chief was extremely tapu, 
and his rank was the highest in the tribe, but he had 
little real. power. The secular chiefs seem to have had 
more power over the lives and property of their sub- 
jects than was usually the case in Polynesia, but even 
they could not alienate land. Both the sacred and secu- 
lar chieftainships were hereditary in certain families, 
but the actual chiefs were elected from among those 
eligible for the office. Priests were important, but do 
not seem to have been organized. 

The system of land tenure varied considerably in 
different tribes. In general three classes of land were 
recognized. The yavu or town lot belonged to the head 
of the family. In theory at least, each village origi- 
nated from the increase of a single family. As popu- 
lation grew more, houses were built around that of the 
original ancestor. All the houses were named, and 
when the village was destroyed, it was rebuilt on the 
same plan. The house and the land on which it stood 
descended from the father to the eldest son. Nkele or 
arable land was waste land which had been reclaimed 
by some family. Final ownership of this was vested 
in the section, but in practice it remained the property 
of the reclaimers as long as it continued in use. 


SOCIAL ORGANIZATION 163 


Veikau or waste land was considered the prop- 
erty of the whole tribe. It was administered by the 
chief, and was usually apportioned out to tenants, not 
full members of the tribe, who paid rent and service 
directly to the chief. All the members of a tribe were 
expected to give a certain amount of labor to the chief 
each year. This was used to keep up roads and bridges, 
and also to help members of the tribe. When a man 
wanted to build a house, he would apply to the chief 
for help, and the chief in turn would send out a call 
for labor. 

The Fijian commoner reckoned his wealth, not by 
the amount of his property, but by the number of 
friends from whom he could beg. Pure communism 
was unknown, but the claims of relationship within 
the tribe were so strong as to constitute a lien on all 
personal property. This begging was really a substi- 
tute for trade or barter. When a man had more salt 
than he needed, a neighbor begged it from him, and 
when the man needed yams, he in turn begged it from 
the neighbor. A man’s rights were strongest over the 
property of his maternal uncle, and he could carry off 
anything that the latter possessed. People of two vil- 
lages who traced their descent from a common ances- 
- tor and worshipped the same gods also had a recipro- 
cal right of plunder, visiting one another and stripping 
the houses of all food and movable property. 


RELIGION 


The Polynesians believed in the existence of in- 
numerable supernatural beings. These were classified 
and arranged in a great hierarchy, but only a few of 
them were actually worshipped. No attention was 
paid to a multitude of minor spirits, who corresponded 
in a general way to the European elves and goblins, 
or to most of the great ancient gods of the creation 
myths; for it was felt that the latter were too remote 
to interfere in the world of human affairs. There was 
no concept of a supreme being, although the higher or- 
ders of priests and chiefs in New Zealand seem to have 
approached it in their worship of the god Io. In New 
Zealand and Hawaii three great deities,—Tane, Tu, 
and Rongo,—stood at the head of the sacred hierarchy. 

Tane was a sky god and creator, frequently re- 
ferred to in the oldest chants and myths, but he had 
no temples or direct worship. In the north island of 
New Zealand he was a forest god and relatively unim- 
portant. Tu was a war god, and was the foremost 
deity in Hawaii, where the finest temples were dedi- 
cated to him. He was the recipient of most of the hu- 
man sacrifices. Rongo was an agricultural god. These 
three deities were known throughout the rest of Poly- 
nesia, but were of lesser importance and changed their 
attributes somewhat in the various groups. In the 
Society group Rongo was a war god. In Samoa, 
Tonga, and the Society and Cook groups the head of 
the sacred hierarchy was Tangaroa. He was a sea god 
and creator. He was known in Hawaii and New Zea- 
land, but was unimportant, being a sea or forest god. 


164 


RELIGION 165 


Below the great gods just described there were 
everywhere a number of deities who were worshipped 
by part of the population. The activities of most of 
these seem to have been rigidly prescribed. They 
watched over a single tribe, family, or locality ; or were 
the patrons of some trade. In Hawaii every industry 
had its god, including a god of the thieves, while the 
great universal gods were self-existent, and had never 
had material form. Many of the lesser deities appear 
to have originally been human beings. In western 
Polynesia, especially Samoa, there was also a tendency 
to identify the minor gods with animals. The animal 
itself was not considered divine, but it was believed to 
be the favorite vehicle of the god, and on that account 
could not be injured or eaten by his followers. 

There was a strong undercurrent of ancestor wor- 
ship everywhere in Polynesia. It underlay the whole 
social organization, and was the foundation of the ex- 
aggerated respect paid to rank and descent. Even the 
deities who had never been human came within its 
scope, for the chiefs commonly traced their descent 
from these and, in reverencing them, were reverencing 
the founders of their line. The worship of recogniz- 
edly human ancestors was least important in Samoa 
and Tonga. Indeed, it hardly existed in Samoa, al- 
though the spirits of chiefs were sometimes prayed to, 
and even a commoner might invoke his immediate an- 
cestors in time of stress. In Tonga the spirits of dead 
chiefs formed one of the two classes of deities who 
were worshipped, and their tombs were used as 
temples. They were believed to return and give 
oracles through the priests. 

In Hawaii ancestor worship was a family affair, 
overshadowed by the tribal worship of the greater 


166 ETHNOLOGY OF POLYNESIA AND MICRONESIA 


gods. In the Cook and Society groups ancestor wor- 
ship was interwoven with that of the non-human 
deities, and the temples of the latter were used as 
burying grounds. At least in the Society group each 
family also had its own sacred place dedicated to its 
ancestors. In the Marquesas the ancestor cult was all 
important, and little attention was paid to any other 
deities. In New Zealand the ancestors were the guar- 
dians of the tribe, and were frequently appealed to for 
help and guidance. There can be little doubt that the 
worship of ancestors, or of the lesser gods who were 
the guardians of a man’s village or trade, stood much 
closer to the hearts of the people than that of the great 
deities. They were simple, familiar beings who could 
be appealed to directly, while the great gods were 
hedged about by the priests and the ritual of the temple. 

The Polynesians felt that there was no connection 
between religion and morality. As long as a man 
avoided breaking the tapu, his conduct toward his fel- 
low men did not concern the gods. To the ordinary na- 
tive religion consisted of sacrifice and the repetition of 
certain set formulas. His devotion to the gods was 
based on fear and on the hope of future favors. Sac- 
rifice was a part of practically all rites. Even at ordi- 
nary meals a little food was set aside as an offering 
to the ancestors, while all requests had to be accom- 
panied by gifts. The sacrifices were usually food, 
whose essence was consumed by the god, while his 
priest consumed its substance. Human sacrifice was 
rare in Tonga and Samoa, but seems to have been 
fairly common in the rest of Polynesia. It was very 
common in the Cook, Society, and Marquesas groups, 
where human victims were offered at most important 
ceremonies. 


RELIGION 167 


In Hawaii nearly all the human sacrifices were 
made to Tu, the war god. The practice does not figure 
in the oldest legends. Apparently it was introduced 
into that group by immigrants who came from south- 
eastern Polynesia between A.D. 1000 and 1200. The 
victims were usually captive enemies, but criminals 
and commoners who had incurred the ill will of the 
priests were also offered. In the Cook group certain 
tribes or families were set aside for sacrifice. The 
proper performance of ritual was nearly as important 
in gaining the god’s favor as the making of sacrifices. 
The least slip would nullify the effect of all that had 
gone before, and would make it necessary to begin 
again. In some instances it was thought that an er- 
ror would be fatal to the priest himself. The natives 
did not distinguish between religion and magic, and 
many of the formulas repeated by the priests were be- 
lieved to compel the god to accede to their demands. 

The priest acted as a medium of communication 
between the people and the particular god whom he 
served. It was his duty to present their offerings and 
requests to the deity and to deliver the god’s answers. 
He was also the keeper of the tribal lore and the guar- 
dian of his god’s temple, if there was one. His most 
important single function seems to have been the giv- 
ing of oracles, which were usually delivered by word 
of mouth while in a trance condition. Because of the 
great importance attached to the rituals, priests us- 
ually underwent a long novitiate. It was almost impos- 
sible for an uninstructed man to become one. Mem- 
bership in the priesthood everywhere tended to become 
hereditary. It was strictly so in some groups. In 
Tonga, Samoa, and New Zealand each priest. per- 
formed all the priestly functions. The priesthood as a 


168 ETHNOLOGY OF POLYNESIA AND MICRONESIA 


whole was not organized. In the Cook group and the 
Marquesas the priesthood seems to have been partially 
organized. There was a distinction between the in- 
spirational priests, who delivered the oracles, and the 
ceremonial priests, who attended to the temples and 
sacrificial rites. | 

In the Society group and Hawaii the priesthood 
was thoroughly organized, forming a distinct heredi- 
tary cast. The various functions were delegated to 
different orders of priests, one order keeping the gene- 
alogies and myths, another caring for the temples, etc. 
In Hawaii there were even farming priests, who tilled 
the god’s lands, and warrior priests, who led armies in 
battle and hurled spells against the enemy. Wherever 
the priestly functions were divided, that of giving or- 
acles was reserved for the highest order. The priest- 
hood was chiefly recruited from the upper classes, 
often from the younger brothers of chiefs. Its mem- 
bers ranked above the commoners and lesser nobles. 
The high priest of an important god was little inferior 
in rank to the reigning chief. 

Shamans were important everywhere in the area. 
It is somewhat difficult to draw a line between them 
and the unspecialized priests of the sort found in 
Tonga and New Zealand. The real difference seems to 
have been that, while the priest was controlled by his 
god, the shaman controlled his supernatural helper. 
The shaman’s helper was often the spirit of some dead 
person which he had seized, or which had attached 
itself to him. The principal function of the shaman 
was to cure disease, but he worked magic of all sorts. 
In New Zealand the shamans were specialists, one man 
confining himself to diagnosing diseases, while another 
made the cures. Many of them practised black magic. 


RELIGION 169 


It was generally believed that if they obtained the 
cuttings of a man’s hair or nails, his spittle, etc., they 
could bring about his death. The shamans as a class 
were feared rather than respected. Their office was 
not hereditary. They were not organized among them- 
selves. They were usually men, but female shamans 
were important in the Marquesas and Society groups. 

In the Society group there was an organization 
known as the Areoi, made up of men and women who 
devoted themselves to pleasure. The members spent 
their lives in wandering from place to place, giving 
dances and musical entertainments. The people es- 
teemed them as a superior order of beings, closely al- 
lied to the gods. They were believed to go to a heaven 
of their own after death. A man who wished to join 
the society killed all his children, and any children 
born to members were put to death. The society was 
organized into a number of grades which were dis- 
tinguished by different tattooed designs. Many of 
their entertainments were obscene. It seems probable 
that they were in some way connected with a gener- 
ation cult, and that their acts were believed to increase 
fertility. 

All the Polynesians had sacred places of some 
sort. In New Zealand there were no real temples, al- 
though certain places were sacred. The nearest ap- 
proach to a temple seems to have been the large house 
in which young men were instructed in the tribal lore. 
In Tonga and Samoa the temples were simple houses, 
like dwellings. In Tonga the temple was often built 
over the tomb of a dead chief, while in Samoa the town 
houses were sometimes used as temples. In the Cook 
and Austral groups the temples were usually stone en- 
closures or platforms, often without houses. In the 


170 ETHNOLOGY OF POLYNESIA AND MICRONESIA 


Cook group they were used as burial places. In the 
Society group the temples were quite elaborate. There 
were several different forms, but the most important 
temples were usually low-walled enclosures with a 
platform or pyramid at one end. They were used as 
burial places and also as assembly places. Each chief 
had his hereditary seat in the marae (“temple”), and 
when he emigrated to another island, he would usually 
take one of the stones from the marae with him and 
found a new marae of his own. The marae differed in 
sanctity, the most sacred being one on the island of 
Raiatea. 

In the Marquesas there were two sorts of temple, 
the public ones, which were attached to the sacred 
places, and the mortuary ones, which were usually 
built high up in the hills. The former were used 
for public rites in which the whole tribe participated, 
and were not used as burial places. The latter were 
primarily burial places, but were the scene of most of 
the human sacrifices. The temples of both sorts were 
usually stone platforms which bore houses. These 
houses were shaped like the dwellings, but had exces- 
sively high roofs, so that early writers often refer to 
them as obelisks. In Hawaii there were several types 
of temple. The oldest form seems to have been a 
simple stone platform or pyramid which sometimes 
bore a house shaped like an ordinary dwelling. In 
historic times the most important temples were stone- 
walled enclosures containing a number of houses for 
the priests and images. There were also tall structures 
covered with tapa from which the priests delivered 
their oracles. Only chiefs and priests were admitted 
to the temple enclosure, the common people remaining 
outside and being told what was going on by the priests. 


RELIGION 7A 


Images were used in all parts of Polynesia, but 
were unimportant in Tonga, Samoa, and New Zealand. 
In Tonga and Samoa the symbol of the god was usually 
some object, such as a stone or shell trumpet, while in 
New Zealand it was a carved stick, usually with a face 
at the upper end, which was only set up during cere- 
monies. In the Cook and Society groups crudely 
carved images were kept in the temples, and were also 
carried in processions and even taken to war. In the 
Marquesas and Hawaii grotesquely carved human fig- 
ures were set up in all the temples. In Easter Island 
enormous stone figures were erected in the burial 
places. None of the images or objects symbolizing the 
gods seems to have been considered divine in them- 
selves. They were simply bodies which the gods could 
occupy at will. 

Most of the important ceremonies centered about 
war and agriculture. Harvest festivals at which the 
gods were offered great heaps of food were common. 
In the Society group there was a fire-walking cere- 
mony. A large earth oven was built and, when the 
stones had been heated red hot, the priests walked 
across them barefoot. There seems to have been no 
trick in the ceremony, and why they escaped injury 
has never been satisfactorily explained. 

Polynesian mythology was unusually elaborate. 
The creation myths are of especial interest, for many 
of them show a philosophic trend surprising in an un- 
civilized people. The Maori believed that the original 
state of the universe was kore, a condition of chaos or 
nothingness permeated with generative power. From 
this arose a yawning and immeasurable darkness, po, 
which was blank and unformed, but carried within 
itself the potency and essence of all life. From po 


172 ETHNOLOGY OF POLYNESIA AND MICRONESIA 


there arose successively eighteen periods, each of vast. 
duration, which were named Nothingness, Darkness, 
Seeking, Following on, Conception of thought, Enlarg- 
ing, etc., until in the eighteenth period came light. 
After many more periods rangi, “heaven” and papa, 
“earth,” appeared. The heaven father and earth moth- 
er embraced and clung together, and the gods were 
begotten. From this point on the myth loses its philo- 
sophic character. Tane, born from the embrace of 
Heaven and Earth, tore his parents apart, and set up 
the props of heaven to support the sky. From the 
space that lay beyond and about Heaven and Earth 
he brought in the children of light, the sun, moon and 
stars, and established them in their places. 

He then created plant and animal life, and lastly 
man. There were many versions of the latter part of 
creation. According to one, Tane made the first man 
from red earth and breathed the breath of life into 
him, while the first woman was born from the union 
of the Mirage and Echo. Even the great periods which 
preceded Heaven and Earth were personified, and the 
myth was cast in the form of a genealogy of the uni- 
verse in which each god and even each human line had 
its place. The myth in its entirety was known only to 
a few of the higher priests. An essentially similar cre- 
ation myth was known in the Marquesas. In Hawaii 
there was no long series of vaguely personified entities, 
the first life springing directly from chaos. Creation 
was divided into stages. In the first stage the sea 
took form, and was inhabited by lowly forms of life 
whose accumulating bodies gradually formed land. In 
the second stage Black Night and Wide-spread Night 
gave birth to leafy plants, insects and birds, and the 
first glimmer of light appeared. In the third stage the 


RELIGION 173 


sea produced larger forms some of which began to 
creep upon the muddy land. In the fourth stage food 
plants came into existence. In the fifth, night and day 
became separate, and the pig appeared. In the sixth, 
the abstract psychic qualities to be embodied in man 
were developed. In the seventh and last, confusion 
ceased, light became clear, and man and woman, to- 
gether with the higher gods, were born. 

The evolutionary type of cosmogenic myth was 
strongest in New Zealand, Hawaii, and the Marquesas. 
In Tonga and Samoa the cosmogenic myth was cre- 
ative. The gods lived in a sky world below which there 
was only sea. One of them cast down a stone, which 
became the world. Some of the gods descended to it, 
and later mankind appeared. In the Society group 
Tangaroa was conceived of as a world soul,—a self- 
evolving, self-existing, creative deity who alone was 
ultimately responsible for the origin of the universe. 

Aside from the creation myths the best-known 
Polynesian stories centre about the hero Maui, who 
was the youngest and cleverest of six brothers. His 
three most widely told exploits were fishing up the 
land, snaring the sun, and obtaining fire for men. In 
the first the land is a great fish which he catches with 
his magic hook and kills with his adze, the valleys being 
the cuts he made. In the second the sun travels across 
the sky so fast that there is hardly any daylight. He 
catches it with a magic rope as it comes up, and makes 
it promise to go more slowly. There were several ver- 
sions of the fire quest in different groups. In New Zea- 
land he gets it from an old woman who lives under 
the earth. In Hawaii he steals it from the mud hens. 

The Fijians, like the Polynesians, believed in a 
multitude of gods and spirits, but all the tribes re- 


174 ETHNOLOGY OF POLYNESIA AND MICRONESIA 


cognized one deity as of supreme importance. This god, 
Ndengel, was an enormous serpent who lived in a cave 
near the northern end of Viti Levu. His only emotion 
was hunger, and he gave no sign of life beyond eating, 
answering his priests, and changing his position from 
side to side. He was the eldest of the gods and the 
creator of the other gods and the universe, but he had 
fewer priests and temples than many of the lesser 
deities. Many of the lesser gods had monstrous form. 
Thangawalu was a giant sixty feet tall. Roko Mbati- 
ndua, ‘‘the one-toothed lord,” had the shape of a man 
with wings instead of arms and a single tooth in his 
lower jaw which rose above his head. Each district, 
trade, etc., had its guardian deity, as in Polynesia. 
Ancestor worship was much more important than in 
western Polynesia. The head of the family was con- 
sidered the incarnation of the ancestors. Sacrifices ac- 
companied all petitions, but ritual seems to have been 
rather poorly developed. 

The priest of each god was a hereditary official, 
but the priesthood as a whole was not organized. The 
temples were high-roofed houses erected on tall, stone- 
faced mounds, and were also used as tribal council- 
houses and guest-houses. A man could only appeal to 
his god at his temple and through his priest. There 
were few if any images, but standing stones of un- 
usual form were sometimes worshipped as the dwell- 
ing-place of gods. In western Fiji a men’s secret so- 
ciety, the Nanga, was important. All the men of the 
tribe were initiated into this, there being three degrees 
of membership. The initiation was largely a test of 
courage and endurance, but the novice also had to 
make gifts to the initiates. The ceremonies were held 
in a stone-walled enclosure which was also used as a 


RELIGION 175 


gathering place for the men. A man might invoke his 
ancestors there without the intercession of a priest. 
Somewhat similar men’s societies were wide-spread in 
Melanesia, but were lacking in Polynesia. 

There is little satisfactory information on Micro- 
nesian religion. That of the Gilbert group seems to 
have been fundamentally ancestor worship. Even 
their greatest deity, Tabueriki, was not improbably 
a deified ancestor, once a mighty chief. Ancestor wor- 
ship was less important elsewhere, but the natives 
seem to have drawn no clear line betwen self-existing, 
supernatural beings and those who had once been hu- 
man. The functions of the gods were more or less 
specialized, although this feature was less pronounced 
than in Polynesia. A supreme creator deity was pres- 
ent only in the western Carolines. There was a strong 
tendency for spirits to be resident in, or associated 
with, plants or animals. Sacrifices, usually of food, 
were made everywhere in the region, but seem to have 
been rather infrequent in the Carolines. Human sacri- 
fice was unknown. Ritual was only moderately de- 
veloped. In all the groups there were individuals who 
combined the duties of priest and shaman, serving the 
gods, curing the sick and working magic. 

An organized priesthood seems to have been lim- 
ited to the eastern Carolines, although in the Gilberts 
there were priests attached to the service of special 
gods. Mediums, who communicated with the souls of 
the dead, or the lesser spirits, were a distinct class in 
the Carolines and Marshalls. The priests do not seem 
to have been inspired by their gods or to have given 
oracles. The nearest approach to the latter was in the 
Gilberts, where the priests listened at the sacred stones 
and conveyed the message to the people, and where 


176 ETHNOLOGY OF POLYNESIA AND MICRONESIA 


chiefs were sometimes inspired by the spirits of their 
ancestors. In the Mariana group there is said to have 
been a society, known as the writoy, which resembled 
the Tahitian Areoi in several respects. Sacred houses 
were sometimes erected in all the groups, but were 
most important in the Carolines and Gilberts. Images 
of the gods were the exception rather than the rule. 
In the Carolines the district gods were often repre- 
sented by idols, but the high gods had no representa- 
tions. In the Gilberts a few ancestral images were 
made. Throughout Micronesia offerings were made 
and rites performed at uncarved stones believed to be 
the dwelling places of spirits. This practice was most 
important in the Gilberts, where stone pillars were 
commonly erected, anointed with oil, and bound with 
leaves. | 

Micronesian mythology has been collected to a 
small extent, but the creation myths have some points 
of interest. In the Pelews and western Carolines the 
natives seem to have been indifferent to the origin of 
the universe. The few myths recorded are of the cre- 
ative type. In the rest of the Carolines the myths are 
more elaborate, but are also purely creative, assuming 
the immemorial existence of a deity. The origin myth 
of the western Marshalls was also of the creative type, 
but that of the eastern Marshalls begins with two 
worms, male and female, which lay together in a co- 
coon and stretched it until it was as large as the uni- 
verse. Then from an abscess on the forehead of the 
male worm, one of the gods appeared, while the female 
one bore two female deities. The world and the other 
deities arose in different ways from the primordial 
pair. In this there is at least a suggestion of the evo- — 
lutionary creation myths of Polynesia. The creative 


RELIGION 177 


and evolutionary types of origin myth meet in the Gil- 
berts. In the northern islands of that group the myths 
are predominantly creative, while in the southern is- 
lands are found the Polynesian concepts of an original 
chaos and the separation of earth and sky. Curiously 
enough, these concepts are weak in the Polynesian 
groups nearest to the Gilberts. 


DEATH AND BURIAL 


All the natives of Polynesia believe in the exis- 
tence of a soul, a separate entity dwelling in each man 
and surviving his death. There is no belief in multi- 
ple souls. Even the souls of persons in good health 
left their bodies in sleep, and dreams were actual 
soul experiences. Such living souls retained the form 
and features of their owners, and could be seen and 
recognized by those who had that power. When a 
man became ill, his soul was unusually restless, wan- 
dering about constantly. When he died, the connec- 
tion between the soul and body was severed. The loss 
of a soul was certain, but not immediate death. A 
person whose soul had gone might live for some time, 
the body carrying on automatically. In some places 
sorcerers could cause death by snaring the soul and 
imprisoning it or destroying it. There seems to have 
been a good deal of confusion in the minds of the na- 
tives themselves as to the fate of the soul after death. 
It persisted for some time, but its power and the 
length of time before it disappeared were dependent 
on the mana of its owner while alive. 

The souls of great chiefs were almost immortal, 
and could be appealed to as gods, while those of slaves 
were so weak that there was some doubt whether they 
had souls at all. There was no idea of future rewards 
or punishments for moral conduct. 

In Micronesia the soul usually went to some spirit 
land at death, although belief in reincarnation was 
not uncommon. Its fate was determined by its own- 
er’s age, or social status, or the manner of his death. 


178 


DEATH AND BURIAL 179 


It might return to earth, and was then able to do 
injury to men, and had to be propitiated. In the 
Carolines the dead went to sky heaven. The belief 
of the natives of Namoluk was typical. There the 
soul took the form of a seabird at death and flew to 
the spirit dwellings, which stood one above another in 
the sky. It bathed in a body of water, and immedi- 
ately all became dark. A god, Rothe, led the soul to 
a tree and gave it leaves. When it grasped these, the 
light reappeared. Another god, Olaitin, then led the 
soul up to heaven by a ladder, passing between two 
rocks that clashed together. It might be caught there 
and destroyed. In the heaven to which it was as- 
signed it led a life very much like that on earth, feast- 
ing and dancing all night and sleeping from sunrise 
to late afternoon. When it wished, it could return 
to earth to visit its friends. 

The souls of men who fell in battle were taken 
to a special heaven, where there was fighting. Those 
of women who died in childbirth went to a far place, 
where heaven and earth met. The souls of men who 
hanged themselves were shut out of heaven, for the 
gods were disgusted at the sight of their protruding 
tongues. In Kusaie of the Carolines and in the Mar- 
shalls the souls went to a far island. In the Gilberts 
the natives of Peru believed in a sky heaven, but the 
rest in an island heaven, like the Marshalls. The souls 
of those who were not tattooed were caught and de- 
stroyed by a giantess. 

In Fiji the path of the soul was beset with great 
dangers. Its final abode was a pleasant land, where 
they led a life like on earth, but few reached it. When 
a man’s soul first left his grave, he carried with him 
the whale tooth placed in his dead hand, and at a 


180 ETHNOLOGY OF POLYNESIA AND MICRONESIA 


certain place threw it at a tree. If he missed, he had 
to remain in his grave. If he struck it, he went to 
another place, and there waited for the spirits of his 
strangled wives. He could not go on until they joined 
him, and when a bachelor he would be caught and de- 
voured by a demon. When his wives joined him, he 
set out to a place called Nai Thombothombo, meeting 
and fighting certain spirits on the way. If he was 
conquered, he was eaten. Nai Thombothombo was a 
real locality in Fiji, and the spirits’ road to it ran 
through a town. The houses in this town were all 
built with the doors opposite to each other, so that the 
spirits could pass through without hinderance, and its 
inhabitants always spoke in low tones or communi- 
cated by signs. They also had to be very careful in 
handling edged tools, lest they inadvertently cut a 
ghost. ; 

The spirit next boarded a canoe and went to a 
mountain, where he was interrogated as to his rank. 
He was then sent back to earth, to be deified by his 
descendants, or seated on the blade of an oar from 
which he was dumped into the sea, through which he 
passed to his final abode. There he lived almost the 
same life as on earth, but might be punished for cer- 
tain oversights while alive. Women who were not 
tattooed were tormented by other women or scraped 
up and made into food for the gods. Men who had 
not slain an enemy were sentenced to beat a heap of 
filth with a club, while the other men jeered at them. 

In Tonga and Samoa the dwelling of the dead was 
called Pulotu. The Tongans thought that it was an 
island lying somewhere to the northwest, but some of 
their myths also refer to it as an underworld. The 
Samoans believed that it lay under the sea. Two cir- 


DEATH AND BURIAL 181 


cular openings among the rocks near the beach on the 
western end of the island of Savaii were thought to 
be the entrance to it. The larger one was used by 
chiefs, and the other by commoners. A river flowed 
at the bottom of the pit, which carried the souls to 
Pulotu, where they bathed in the water of life and 
became young and strong again. Life in Pulotu was 
like the pleasantest on earth. The souls were very 
light and volatile, and could return to the world at will. 

In the Cook group ordinary souls were cooked 
and eaten by an ogress, called Miru. The souls of men 
who had died in battle eluded her, and were changed 
to the clouds of the dry season. In the Society group 
the soul was conducted by spirits to Po (‘‘Darknesg’’), 
where its ancestors scraped it with a shell and fed it 
to the god. It passed through his body and reshaped 
itself. After undergoing this process three times, it 
became deified, and could revisit the world and inspire 
living persons. There was also a heaven, invisible to 
mortals, located on the island of Raiatea, where the 
souls of the Areoi and others led a life of pleasure. In 
the Marquesas there were three underworlds, one 
above the other. The lowest was a very pleasant place, 
while the uppermost was a miserable one. Souls went 
to one or another of these, according to the number of 
pigs sacrificed for them. There was also an upper world 
inhabited by the gods and the souls of deified chiefs. 
In Hawaii the dead went to an underworld, and there 
was a tale of a man who descended to it by a long 
rope, captured the soul of his wife and, returning, 
forced it to reenter her body. In New Zealand the 
souls passed to the northernmost point of the island, 
where they lacerated themselves after the manner of 
mourners, and then slid or leaped into the underworld, 


182 ETHNOLOGY OF POLYNESIA AND MICRONESIA 


undergoing successive stages of death, passing to low- 
er and lower regions, and finally being extinguished. 

The dead were treated with the greatest respect, 
for even when the natives were not ancestor worship- 
pers, they had a lively fear of ghosts, and did not wish 
to incur the ill will of the departed. As soon as death 
occurred, all the relatives joined in loud wailing, which 
was sometimes kept up for several days. In Polyne- 
sia the mourners often beat their heads with stones 
and lacerated their faces and breasts, but this was 
rarely done in Micronesia or in Fiji. In Hawaii and 
the Society group the whole population joined in vio- 
lent mourning on the death of a chief. Such occasions 
were made an excuse for the wildest license. In Fiji 
the mourning and the preparation of the body for 
burial were begun as soon as the person’s condition 
was considered hopeless. The supposed corpse might 
live for several hours, speak, eat, etc., but it was 
thought that the spirit had left it and that its motions 
were purely involuntary. In extreme cases a man 
might be buried alive. In all the localities where earth 
burial was practised the body was washed, anointed 
with oil, and dressed in the best clothes and ornaments. 
It was allowed to lie in state for a time, so that rela- 
tives from a distance might pay their respects to it. 
A few favorite belongings were buried with it. 

In New Zealand, the Marquesas, Hawaii, and 
probably the Society group human sacrifices were 
made on the death of a chief that their spirits might 
accompany the dead and serve him in the other world. 
In New Zealand wives were often strangled at their 
own request. In Fiji several of a chief’s wives were 
usually strangled, and their bodies placed in the grave 
as a carpet, while at least one strong warrior was 


DEATH AND BURIAL 183 


killed in order that he might go before the chief and 
overcome the dangers of the spirit road for him. In 
the Marshall Islands a man was sometimes killed and 
buried with a chief, but the practice seems to have 
been unknown elsewhere in Micronesia. 

In Samoa the spirits of those who had not been 
buried occasioned great concern. They wandered 
comfortless and haunted their relatives. When a 
man’s body could not be obtained, his relatives went 
to some place near where he had met his death, spread 
a piece of tapa on the ground, and prayed for his 
spirit to visit them. The first living thing that 
alighted on the sheet was believed to contain his spirit, 
and was taken home and buried with the same cere- 
monies as would have been accorded the real body. 
Even the souls of those whose bodies had been prop- 
erly tended were considered more or less malevolent, 
and attempts were often made to drive or entice them 
away from the living or to prevent their return. » 

In the Gilbert group the whole village turned out 
with clubs on three successive nights and went 
through the town, beating the ground and trees to 
make the ghost leave. In Tahiti, after the corpse had 
been placed on a bier in the embalming house, a spec- 
ial priest dug a hole at the foot of the bier and prayed 
that the dead man’s sins might be deposited there. 
He then planted a post in the hole and, going up to the 
corpse, laid a few strips of plantain leaves on it, sym- 
bolizing the members of its immediate family. He 
bade the spirit to be contented in its new home and 
not to return to trouble the living. 

The Tahitians also had a peculiar ceremony in 
which a masked and elaborately costumed priest went 
through the district, accompanied by a number of men 


184 ETHNOLOGY OF POLYNESIA AND MICRONESIA 


whose bodies were painted red, white, and black, and 
beat everyone whom he met. They were supposed to 
be inspired by the spirit of the deceased and revenged 
any injury to him. The Samoans kindled large fires 
near the grave, and kept them burning all night for 
ten nights. Persons who had touched a corpse were 
under certain tapus until they had been ceremonially 
purified, but the purification usually took place shortly 
after the funeral, and long mourning periods were 
unusual. The outward signs of mourning were old 
garments and in some cases special ornaments or 
methods of wearing the hair. 

The methods of disposal of corpses were surpris- 
ingly varied. Several different methods were often 
practised simultaneously in the same group. Simple 
earth burial in an extended position was the rule in 
Micronesia. In the Carolines and Gilberts the body 
was usually laid with the head east. In the Marshalls 
the bodies of women were sometimes thrown into the 
sea. Sea burial was also practised in the Carolines. 
in Ruk, in the Carolines, the bones of the dead were 
sometimes hung up in the dwelling. In the Gilberts 
the bodies of some persons were mummified, and the 
skulls of ancestors were preserved. The Marshall 
Islanders raised mounds faced with coral slabs over 
their graves, while burials in stone vaults have been 
found in Ponape, in the Carolines. 

In Fiji a man was usually buried under the floor ~ 
of his own house. If he was a chief, the house was 
then abandoned and became a shrine where his spirit 
was worshipped. In some cases the body was placed 
in a niche in the side of the grave. In one instance 
a chief’s son was laid on the deck of a large double 
canoe, and the whole covered with a mound. 


DEATH AND BURIAL 185 


In Tonga chiefs were buried in langi, large 
mounds containing a _ stone-lined vault. Smaller 
mounds were erected over commoner’s graves, their 
tops being covered with pebbles of different colors 
arranged in simple designs. In Samoa simple earth 
burial in an extended position with the head east was 
the rule for all classes. Chief’s bodies were sometimes 
placed in log coffins, and their graves were covered 
with low mounds. Bodies were sometimes set adrift in 
canoes. A single family of chiefs mummified their 
dead and preserved the corpses in a special house. In 
Niue corpses were set adrift or exposed, and the bones 
placed in a cave or vault. In the Cook group corpses 
were buried in a merae (‘sacred place’), placed in a 
cave, or thrown into a chasm. Bodies were buried in a 
flexed position, face down and head to the east. The 
limbs were bound, and heavy stones placed on the 
grave to keep the ghost from returning to trouble the 
living. Bodies placed in caves were carried out into 
the sun from time to time and rubbed with oil until 
they finally became mummified. Rank seems to have 
played no part in determining the method of disposal, 
although one cave on Mangaia had one entrance for 
chiefs and another for commoners. In some cases the 
body was carried to a merae, left there for a few 
hours, and then taken to the cave. When this was 
done, the spirit was supposed to remain in the merae, 
the disposal of the body being called “the throwing 
away of the bones.” 

In the Society and Marquesas groups and in the 
island of Mangareva, in the Tuamotus, nearly all 
corpses were mummified and kept for several months. 
The viscera were removed by way of the anus, the 
_ skin punctured to release the juices, and the body 


186 ETHNOLOGY OF POLYNESIA AND. MICRONESIA 


sunned and rubbed with coconut oil until it dried up. 
In the Society group the brain was also removed, and 
the body cavity packed with tapa soaked in oil. When 
mummification was complete, the corpse was dressed, 
and kept either in the dwelling or in a small special 
house built for the purpose until it fell to pieces. The 
bones were then gathered and hidden in a cave, or 
were sometimes buried in a merae. 

In the Society group the skulls of chiefs were pre- 
served, and in the Marquesas those of most men. 
Earth burial in a flexed position was also practised in 
both these localities, but was limited to the very poor, 
the insane, and certain persons whose ghosts were 
especially feared. In the Marquesas the body was 
sometimes placed in a log coffin after mummifica- 
tion and carried to a cave or left in the branches 
of a tree in some sacred place. Chiefs and priests are 
said to have sometimes been buried in vaults. In ~ 
Easter Island bodies were exposed in a sacred place, 
and the bones gathered and hidden in vaults. Burial 
was also practised. 

In Hawaii commoners were usually buried in a 
flexed position, while chiefs and persons of importance 
were placed in caves. ‘The bodies of some chiefs were 
buried until the flesh had decayed, then dug up, and 
the bones cleaned and preserved, either in a temple 
or in a small sacred house near the dwelling. Great 
care was taken that they should not fall into the hands 
of an enemy. Lesser chiefs and priests were some- 
times buried in an extended position, the priest’s 
graves being within the temple where they had offici- 
ated. Some priests were buried in stone vaults in 
platforms. The bodies of fishermen were wrapped in 
red tapa and thrown into the sea. Bodies placed in 


DEATH AND BURIAL 187 


caves were sometimes preserved for a time by evisce- 
rating them and packing them with salt or by varnish- 
ing them with tz root. 

In New Zealand slaves and commoners were bur- 
ied in a flexed position. Persons of importance were 
usually placed in a coffin or canoe, and placed in a tree 
or on a stage in some sacred place. About a year later 
the bones were cleaned, oiled and painted red, and hid- 
den in a cave, chasm, or hollow tree. The natives of the 
south island sometimes mummified their dead, evisce- 
rating the body, packing it with tow, and drying it 
over a fire. All the Maori sometimes mummified and 
preserved the heads of chiefs. In the northern part 
of the south island and in a few parts of the north 
island the dead were cremated. The related Moriori 
of the Chatham Islands usually buried their dead with 
the face toward the west. Chiefs were placed in 
canoes or covered coffins. Commoners were sometimes 
buried with the head or body above ground. Noted 
fishermen were set adrift in canoes, and a single tribe 
practised cremation. 





BIBLIOGRAPHY 


Numerous scientific studies are contained in the volumes of the 
Journal of the Polynesian Society, and Memoirs and other publications 
of the Bernice Pauahi Bishop Museum. Only books in English which 
may prove of interest to the general reader and student are listed here. 


BeckwitH, M. W.—The Hawaiian Romance of Laieikawai. 
Thirty-third Annual Report of the Bureau of American 
Ethnology, Washington, 1919, pp. 285-666. 


Best, E.—The Stone Implements of the Maori. Dominion 
Museum, Wellington, 1912. 


Maori Storehouses and Kindred Structures. Dominion 
Museum, Wellington, Bulletin No. 5, 1916. 


The Maori. Wellington, 1924. 


Maori Agriculture. The Cultivated Food Plants of the 
Natives of New Zealand, with some Account of Native 
Methods of Agriculture, Its Ritual and Origin Myths. 
Dominion Museum, Wellington, Bulletin No. 9, 1925. 


Brewster, A. B.—The Hill Tribes of Fiji. Philadelphia, 1922. 
Burton, J. W.—The Fiji of To-day. London, 1910. 
CHRISTIAN, F. W.—The Caroline Islands. London, 1899. 


CHURCHILL, W.—The Polynesian Wanderings. Carnegie Insti- 
tution of Washington, 1911. 


Easter Island, the Rapanui Speech and the Peopling of 
Southeast Polynesia. Carnegie Institution of Washington, 
1912. 


Club Types of Nuclear Polynesia. Carnegie Institution 
of Washington, 1917. 


CoutLocoTT, E. E. V.—The Supernatural in Tonga. American 
Anthropologist, 1921, pp. 415-444. 


Cook, J.—Voyage to the Pacific Ocean. Voyages of Discovery. 
The Three Voyages of. Various editions. 


DEANE, W.—Fijian Society or the Sociology and Psychology of 
the Fijians. London, 1921. 


Dew Mar, F.—A Year among the Maoris: A Study of Their 
Arts and Customs. London, 1924. 


Drxon, R. B.—Oceanic Mythology. Boston, 1916. 

ELLIS, W.—Polynesian Researches. 4 vols. London, 1831. 

EMERSON, N. B.—Unwritten Literature of Hawaii. Bureau of 
American Ethnology, Bulletin 38, Washington, 1909. 


189 


190 BIBLIOGRAPHY 


Fison, L.—Tales from Old Fiji. London, 1904. 


GILL, W. W.—Myths and Songs from the South Pacific. London, 
1876. 


GREINER, R. H.—Polynesian Decorative Designs. Bishop Mu- 
seum Bulletin No. 7. Honolulu, 1923. 


Grey, G.—Polynesian Mythology and Ancient Traditional Mytho- 
logy of the New Zealand Race. London, 1855. 


HAMILTON, A.—The Art Workmanship of the Maori Race in 
New Zealand. 4 parts. Dunedin, New Zealand, 1896-1899. 


JARVES, J. J.—History of the Hawaiian Islands. 4th ed., Hono- 
lulu, 1872. 


Lowir, R. H.—Primitive Religion. New York, 1924. Polynesian 
Religion, pp. 75-96. 


Mao, D.—Hawaiian Antiquities. Honolulu, 1903. 


MarTIN, J.—An Account of the Natives of the Tonga Islands, 
compiled and arranged from the extensive communications 
of W. Mariner. Boston, 1820; also Edinburgh, 1827. 


Moss, R.—The Life after Death in Oceania and the Malay 
Archipelago. Oxford University Press, 1925. 


Murray, A. W.—Forty Years’ Mission Work in Polynesia and 
New Guinea, from 1835 to 1875. New York, 1876. 


RoBLEY, Major-General.—Moko; or Maori Tattooing. London, 
1896. 


Rotu, H. L.—The Maori Mantle. Bankfield Museum, Halifax, 
England, 1928. 


ROUTLEDGE, S.—The Mystery of Easter Island. London, 1919. 
RUSSELL, M.—Polynesia. Edinburgh, 1845. 


SEEMANN, B.—Viti, an Account of a Government Mission to the 
Naas or Fijian Islands in the Years 1860-61. Cambridge, 
186 


SETCHELL, W. A.—American Samoa. Part II. Ethnobotany of 
the Samoans. Washington, Carnegie Institution, 1924. 


SmitH, S. P.—Hawaiki; the Original Home of the Maori; with 
a Sketch of Polynesian History. 2nd ed., Melbourne and 
London, 1904. 


TAYLOR, R.—New Zealand and Its Inhabitants. London, 1870. 


THOMSON, B.—The Fijians. A Study of the Decay of Custom. 
London, 1908. 


TREGEAR, E.—The- Maori Race. Wangani, New Zealand, 1904. 


BIBLIOGRAPHY 191 


TURNER, G.—Nineteen Years in Polynesia. London, 1861. 
Samoa a Hundred Years Ago and Long Before. 
London, 1884. 
WESTERVELT, W. D.—Legends of Old Honolulu. London, 1915. 


WHITE, J.—The Ancient History of the Maori, His Mythology 
an Traditions. 6 vols. Wellington, New Zealand, 1887- 


WILLIAMS, T., and CALVERT, J.—Fiji and the Fijians. 2 vols., 
London, 1858; New York, 1859. 


WILKES, C.—Narrative of the United States Exploring Expedi- 
tion, 1838-42. New York, 1856. 


WILLIAMSON, R. W.—The Social and Political Systems of Cen- 
tral Polynesia. 3 vols. Cambridge, 1924. 








GUIDE PART 6. 


FIRE MAKING ON THE MARQUESAS ISLANDS (p. 38). 
From Photograph by R. Linton. 


PLATE I. 








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PLATE IV. 


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GUIDE PART 6. PLATE V. 





PAINTED BARK CLOTH, SAMOA (p. 51), 








A, en 


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PAINTED BARK CLOTH, SAMOA (p. 51). 








GUIDE PART 6. 


PAINTED BARK CLOTH, SAMOA (p. 51). 


PLATE VII. 


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GUIDE PART 6. Sie PLATE VIII. 





| CEREMONIAL PADDLE (p. 106). 
" MANGAIA, COOK GROUP. CASE 32. 





‘GUIDE PART 6. : PLATE IX. 


& 





elect 
WOODEN CLUBS (p. 118). 
WITH BROAD HEADS CARVED INTO HUMAN FACES, MARQUESAS ISLANDS. 











“SHDVAOA S:MOOO NIVIdvO WOUS 
“(201 4) VONOL “SONVO 


*9 LYVd 3GIND 








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“IX 3LV1d “9 LYVd AGIND 





GUIDE PART 6. PLATE XI. 





: | SUIT OF ARMOR, GILBERT ISLANDS (p. 122). CASE 2. 








PLATE XIll. 


GUIDE PART 6. 





MAORI ROBE OF UNDYED FLAX (Phormium tenaz). 


NEW ZEALAND. CASE 14. 


WITH STRINGS OF BLACK FLAX ATTACHED. 





GUIDE PART 6. PLATE XIV. 


Ld 





MAORI FEATHER ROBE (pp. 56, 70, 141). 


_ WITH A BREAST ORNAMENT OF JADE (HEITIKI) REPRESENTING AN ANCESTOR. 
NEW ZEALAND. CASE 14. 





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